


If heaven thou canst not bend

by concernedlily



Series: As above, so below [1]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angry Sex, Boozing, M/M, change management, round table
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:07:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7683979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily/pseuds/concernedlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I want to start by welcoming back Galahad,” Arthur says. “Er. Welcome back, Galahad.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Harry says, politely. Eggsy's tie is a little crooked; Harry's fingers itch to fix it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If heaven thou canst not bend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [futuredescending](https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuredescending/gifts).



> You prompted Eggsy as Arthur: this isn't exactly what you asked for, which I realised when I went back and looked at your prompt after it was written, I'm sorry! I hope you enjoy it.

“I want to start by welcoming back Galahad,” Arthur says. “Er. Welcome back, Galahad.”

“Thank you,” Harry says, politely. Eggsy's tie is a little crooked; Harry's fingers itch to fix it. 

“Okay,” Arthur says. He doesn't look quite comfortable in the seat at the head of the table, but perhaps it's just the way Daniel is giving him his favourite dead-eyed stare. It doesn't seem that likely that would be enough to discombobulate Eggsy, though. Harry has seen the footage of Chester King’s death, the way Eggsy sat inHarry's chair and looked sharp with hatred and snarled his loyalty to Harry's ghost. Eggsy had seemed comfortable enough then. Harry is back in that chair now, slightly stiffer through the hips and significantly arsier in the attitude, which he thinks is fair: he did get shot in the bloody head. 

There are three empty seats. Entirely empty, not filled with holograms. Arthur says, “We’re in week three of the recruitment now - Merlin?”

“Is that all?” Harry says. He'd been told it was going on, but he'd assumed it would be coming to an end by now: Kingsman keeps its numbers low by being extraordinarily effective, so replacing fallen members is always the highest priority. The fastest he's been able to push his recovery to, even stuck in the US to focus on rehabilitation and banned from most Kingsman news and contact as ‘overstimulating’, is four months: it should be well on its way by now.

“We’ve an entirely new system of proposing and competition,” Giles says sourly. “Arthur had some very interesting ideas. Having been through it himself so _recently_.”

“Yeah, and if you ain't got anything new to say about that, you can shut it,” Eggsy says. Harry transfers his gaze to him, slowly, and Eggsy looks down. 

Merlin clears his throat and Harry watches attentively as he sketches the field, what's happened so far, what's coming up for them next. Eggsy seems to have brought in a clean sweep of pretty much every task they set his cohort. It’s a big group, with so many seats empty at once: thirty-two young men and women, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, which is usual, and diverse in age, background, ethnicity, which is not. 

When Merlin has asked if there's any questions, Alastair starts, “I'd just like to raise -”

“What do you think?” Eggsy says, looking to Harry. 

“It all seems very sensible,” Harry says, and glances at Alastair. “Apologies, Alastair, you were saying?”

“Thank you. I'd just like to raise the length of time this is taking, and the demands it's putting on agents to participate in the training. I do see the value of it, Arthur, but under current circumstances I just don't think it's the best use of our time.” His objection has the weary edge of a point that’s been raised before, and shot down.

“Nothing's more important than getting the right people in here,” Eggsy says flatly.

“I have to agree with Alastair,” Jonty says, his hologram flickering at the edges with a faint air of anxiety. “My active op is springing two or three potential leads every day and we simply don't have the manpower to follow any of them up.”

“We’re bringing in more handlers and researchers, but it’s not going that much quicker than the agent training,” Merlin says. “You've seen the new prioritisation rubric, Lamorak?”

“I have,” Jonty says. “I can't say I fully agree with it, Merlin, I'd like to see something that takes more account of the bigger picture. Can't you move any quicker on the handlers?”

“It's difficult,” Merlin says, low. Harry glances around the room at the way everyone except Giles and Roxy are studiously looking away from Eggsy. “I don't disagree with the decision to recruit for potential rather than proven ability but it makes finding candidates and training them more time-consuming.”

“Is there nobody retired who could come back on active duty?” Harry says.

“Done,” Merlin says briefly. “Got twelve back in but they can't be expected to take the same workload as the thirty year olds.”

“There's limited use in having lots of research and nobody to do anything with it. Can Arthur raise at Council?” Daniel says, another shifting green hologram. “Pooling resources and intelligence between agencies seems to me to be an absolute must. Closer co-operation -”

“And let that bloody woman at Statesman take over?” Alexander snaps. “I think not.”

“When's Council?” Harry asks Merlin, flicking through his papers. A full meeting of all the heads of the Kingsman family of agencies is rare. 

“In about a month,” Merlin says. “We’re not the only ones to have lost our chairman. It's been put off.”

“It hasn't been put off long enough,” Giles says. “Arthur, with respect, we haven't even got our own house in order. To go out to Council at this stage is premature.”

“You mean you think I'm not in order,” Eggsy says, his eyes glittering. 

Harry had promised himself he wouldn't interfere with however Eggsy chose to run the meeting, but this doesn't seem constructive. He says, “Eggsy,” softly, and Eggsy shuts up, looking mutinous and tense. 

“Well, if that's everything,” Robert says. “Glad to hear the recruitment is going well, but I'm squatting in an abandoned McDonalds. If those of us in the field could be excused these non-essential meetings -”

“They're essential if I say they're essential,” Eggsy says, striving visibly for authority and landing somewhere around pissed off. “Yeah, fine, we’re finished. Same next week.”

Everyone round the table nods and most of them all but race out. The post-Arthur meeting tea, biscuits and a moan is a fine tradition in Kingsman and Harry is sorry to see it still, apparently, getting enthusiastic participation. 

Roxy comes over to speak to Eggsy, corralling him at the table and speaking too quietly for Harry to hear. He lingers at the table for a moment, watching them; Eggsy looks back, until Roxy touches his arm lightly and he transfers his attention to her, looking harried.

Merlin is at Harry's shoulder, carefully on the side of his good eye. "We need to talk," Merlin says quietly and Harry nods and makes to withdraw.

"You ain't going?" Eggsy says, breaking off from Roxy. She looks at Harry over his shoulder, arms crossed and a thoughtful look on her face. Her suit is impeccably cut, the skirt falling perfectly to her knees and not a centimetre above. She looks like a headmistress of St Paul’s. 

Eggsy arrives in front of Harry, looking hopeful and wide-eyed, and says brightly, “How about this lot, hey? Bunch of old twunts.” 

Harry says, “Quite.” He’s the oldest at Table, now. Gordon had been bang in the middle of an op and hadn’t had a chance in a Brazilian drug cartel’s highly-weaponised base, and Daffyd had been found in the carnage of a Marks and Sparks after the signal. Officially he’d been just another victim, but Harry isn’t a fucking idiot: a gunshot to the head, his dead wife cradled tenderly in his lap.

“I didn’t mean - I ain’t calling _you_ old,” Eggsy says anxiously. “How’s about - d’you wanna go out for dinner, Harry?”

"Sorry, Sir," Merlin says, before Harry can even get his mouth open. "I need Harry today. Just the last bits of paperwork, tidy everything up."

"Right, yeah," Eggsy says, disappointed. "Breakfast tomorrow? Or lunch?"

"Of course I'm at your disposal," Harry says. "Arthur."

Eggsy looks even more disappointed at that and Harry has to keep his face carefully neutral.

"Okay," Eggsy says eventually. "Breakfast then? Here?"

"I'll join you at nine," Harry says. Merlin puts a hand on his shoulder, and with a nod to Eggsy and one to Roxy, Harry is led out.

***

"What did you think?" Merlin says, pouring tea into one of the big white mugs he favours.

"One sugar for me, please," Harry says, and ignores the way Merlin stiffens very minutely before he conspicuously doesn't react. Harry is largely - and incredibly luckily, as everyone kept telling him at the hospital - very well, but it seems that some of the things that scrambled in his brain are being very sluggardly in unscrambling, and the way he processes sweetness and bitterness is one of them. It's a fine thing at his time of life for one's settled tastes and preferences to be turned topsy-turvy, but it's the least of what he has to worry about.

Merlin hands him the tea and he cradles it, enjoying the warmth on his fingers. He says, "I think possibly I did die after all, and this is purgatory. Are his Tables always like that?"

Merlin glints a hint of an ironic smile. "No. Sometimes they go badly."

“I'm not saying he’s not more than up to the job,” Harry says slowly. “In about _thirty years_ , what the fuck were you thinking.”

“I was thinking I needed an Arthur, and he was there,” Merlin says, so calmly Harry has a brief, pleasant fantasy about lifting his glasses off his face and sticking a poison pen straight through his eyeball. “Bloody nobody else would take it. I had to find a regulation from 1947 that in the event no suitable Arthur could be recruited, the position falls to the person most connected to the death of the previous Arthur.”

“A regulation specifically intended to give power to the younger son of Northumberland on the death of Lord Cavendish, who was about four hundred years old,” Harry says. “I do _not_ think they foresaw your installing Eggsy bloody Unwin as a puppet king!”

“I wish he was a puppet king,” Merlin says. “He won’t take advice, Harry. You saw how he talks to them.”

He’s watching Harry very keenly, like a drifting eagle about to swoop. Harry says warily, “I’m not going to criticise. He’s Arthur, he can run things as he likes.”

“Yes,” Merlin says. “While he’s Arthur.”

There’s a silence. It becomes uncomfortable quite rapidly, but Harry’s buggered if he’s going to be the one to break it. He drinks his tea, holding Merlin’s gaze.

Merlin sighs and runs a hand over his head, rubbing the spot on his temple where his tension headaches start. “Harry. You’re the most senior agent we have.”

“I’m a field agent,” Harry says.

Merlin flicks a glance meaningfully at what Harry knows to be his own file: stuffed with thirty years of successful operations, some of the papers already yellowing and the handwriting fading. There’s an electronic version, of course, but of all the things at Kingsman that are all about appearances, the neat brown paper files are among the most harmless. The medical papers and X-rays stuffing it full today are new.

“He’d step aside for you,” Merlin says. “I think he’d be glad to.”

Harry finishes his tea. “He’s Arthur,” he says again. “I can be accused of many things, Merlin, but not, I hope, disloyalty. Thanks for the chat.”

“Not so fast,” Merlin says as Harry makes to rise. He’s looking thoughtful but unsurprised. “The paperwork was an excuse, not a lie. Do you need a pen?”

***

Merlin’s last tedious hoop of reactivation is a final run at the firing range. Harry was signed off as fit at Statesman, but they don't have the facilities Kingsman does, due to Merlin’s skill at claiming jus primae over the most absurdly talented engineers and researchers who come into the worldwide Kingsman system and poaching them off to London. 

The estate has the usual arrangements for firearms training, of course, with the unusual addition of a part-virtual reality part-laser quest training room to approximate work conditions: different environments, all them a frenzy of movement and stress and noise where _ready, aim, fire_ hardly applies. It's not true realism, yet, restricted to distance targets without any of the close fighting or hand-to-hand Harry specialises in, but for target practice it's admirably effective. 

Roxy is in the range when Harry arrives, wearing goggles and ear protectors and shooting merry hell out of paper targets. A new gun, Harry assumes after a minute or two watching her: she pauses after every couple of shots to check the sighting, and at one point strips the whole thing down and back up again in under thirty seconds before resuming her series of neat shots to centre mass. 

“Good afternoon,” he says when she's put it down for the final time and nodded at him in acknowledgement of his watching. “All this to-do and we’ve never actually been formally introduced, have we? Congratulations on your success in the Lancelot competition.”

She smiles and shakes his hand. Her handshake is a shade too firm and long, like she still thinks she's up against the boys and hasn't worked out yet the only way to win is to refuse to compete. 

“It's a pleasure to meet you. I've heard a lot about you,” that last with a faint hint of censure that could mean she's talking about from either Alastair or Eggsy.

“If any of it was good, it was lies,” he says, straight-faced, and she gives him a briefly uncertain glance. “How are you settling in?”

“Very well, thank you,” she says. “Bit of a trial by fire. There's not been much time to second guess any of it.”

“I'm sure,” he says. The way she says it, with a shadowed look in her eyes, sends his thoughts unstoppably to Eggsy and his rapid assumption of Arthur.

“Rox, how’d you - Galahad! Hi! How are you?”

He stiffens at the quick, enthusiastic embrace, disentangles himself as soon as he can without offense. He's rather surprised by the effervescent welcome; he hadn't thought the assistant master-at-arms had a particularly high opinion of him, never mind any affection, but he is finding that he’s benefitting from the rose-tinted glasses of bereavement. No doubt it'll wear off soon now he's alive and well and wandering round getting people’s backs up. 

“Hello, Shaz,” he says. “How nice to see you.”

It is nice to see her. For his part, he's four months behind the reliefs and sorrows of cataloguing the damage of V-Day; Merlin gave him a list of the dead and missing, after much badgering, but the realities of it will be smacking him in the face for weeks yet, half-remembered names on a page turning into vivid silent gaps.

“Harry,” she says, warmly, and bounces back in to kiss his cheek, with a kind smile when he slouches to accept it. “Come for some practice? This’ll be a treat,” she says to Roxy. “Galahad’s the best. When they’re programming the training room it’s always him they’re trying to fuck up.”

“Flattered, I’m sure,” he says dryly, and Roxy grins at him. 

“Eggsy’s almost got your record done for, though. Oh, sorry - Arthur,” she says, distracted, pressing the button to bring Roxy’s target up on the screen and taking the gun out of Roxy’s hands, checking the chamber is empty before she peers at the trigger.

“He’s training?” Harry says, casually.

“Oh yeah, deffo. Keeps saying he’s going to get back in the field eventually, he looks bored as arses behind that desk. He ain’t half turning out a good Arthur, though, he’s agreed loads of proposals we’ve had on Merlin’s desk for seriously years. He was yours, wasn’t he? Was good work, bringing him on. I had money on him, you know. Won a hundred quid off Paul, he were gutted.”

“Right, of course,” Harry says. It’s more effort than it should be, but the memory unspools eventually: a card, a cake, a party. “That’s all still on, is it?”

Shaz slants him a soft, slightly sheepish glance. “Yeah. All done, actually. Quickie marriage, after - well, after. Loads of people done it.”

“Congratulations,” Harry says. He finds himself beaming at her, touched by the evidence of life after - well, after, as she’d put it. The scar that runs down from his temple and along the side of his eye is all but invisible (Kingsman technology, spies can't be visibly marked if they can possibly help it) but he can feel it there, pulling gently. 

“I didn’t know you and Paul were married that recently,” Roxy says. “Congratulations from me as well.”

“Thanks, chick,” Shaz says, exuberant and flushed. “Don’t mean I’m marking you up on this, though. Bit more physio, you’re nearly there.”

“Injury?” Harry says.

Roxy flexes her wrist with a descriptive grimace. “Just a sprain, but my uncle insists it’s sorted before I get another mission. Eggsy’s taken his side.”

“Sorry to pile on, but they’re quite right. No point taking needless risks.”

“There’s so much to be done,” she says. The way she takes the gun back from Shaz is delicate, almost loving, like the weapon is an extension of herself.

Harry shrugs, recognising her frustration. He’d been a decade into his Kingsman career when she and Eggsy were born: he hadn’t learnt to properly value rest and recuperation time until he was in his forties, and getting out of bed without aches and pains was a special occasion. “There always is.”

“Looks like set-up’s done, if you're ready, Sir,” Shaz says, switched effortlessly to gimlet-eyed business. “Are you observing, Lancelot?”

“Do you mind?” she asks him. 

He does mind, but he minds more admitting to minding. “Not at all.”

Shaz hands him one of the laser guns they use in the training room, perfectly weighted and balanced to mirror a Kingsman handgun, including the kick of the recoil, harder than a normal handgun because of the shotgun barrel and clips. He hands over his glasses and she fiddles with them for another minute, switching them to the right setting to narrow his perspective and generate the VR to complement the holograms and projections. She says, “Good luck.”

Harry knows this programme well, but they’re always adding new things, experimenting, trying to catch the agents out: it’s never easy. Today’s setting is a wood, recognisably the trees and paths of the wilderness to the west of the estate’s expansive grounds. The VR is so realistic in the gentle breeze whirring and waving the leaves and the way light dapples through the canopy that Harry can almost believe himself out there, his mind fancifully filling in the slight give of mulch and crack of wood under the soles of his shoes, the dark-green ripeness of the scent.

The gun feels in his hand like a familiar and favourite toy, comfortable and easy; he feels entirely back in his body, training so ingrained it’s indistinguishable from instinct. It's calming, it always is, straight-backed and smooth-moving, shooting in time with the excited rhythmic hammering of his pulse.

Time falls away, draws out as he moves fluidly around the wood, all appreciation for the artistry of it on hold. There are snipers in the canopy and behind the trees, and as he moves further through the VR even a few lean-tos and treehouses that weren't there in the actual woods last time he checked, and he catches a flash out of the corner of his eye, savagely pleased with himself for a quick reaction on the injured side as he drops and rolls and comes up braced on one knee, firing into a grove of sycamore and watching the target fall. 

He's grabbed from behind and abruptly the woods are overlaid

the discordant ring of organ pipes hit by a thrown body

dizzy with pain and rage

fierce yellow light streaming in from the windows out to a hot Southern summer

a body over his shoulder and to the floor and when he blinks again Roxy is on the woodland floor, his knee on her chest and his finger squeezed on the trigger firing bullets from an empty gun.

He's breathing hard, as if he's in pain. So is she, her chest rising and falling sharply under his weight, her hands raised carefully over her head. His next breath catches, shuddering, and he tears the glasses off. When he staggers up and away it's in the gym, the environment-generating VR equipment whining to silence. 

“Apologies,” he says; clears his throat, says it again, properly. “No further harm to the wrist, I hope?”

She flexes it. “It's fine.” She looks like she's considering something, and then she reaches up and he helps pull her to her feet, gently, her fingers on his wild pulse. He lets her go as soon as she's up and runs a hand through his hair. The gun is on the floor, a little way from both of them, like Roxy kicked it away accidentally as she stood up. 

“Galahad?” Shaz says. She's approaching warily, and he makes his expression calm even while he can't help but notice she's keeping Roxy in between herself and him. 

“I wasn't aware it had become usual practice to throw a real-world opponent into the simulation,” he says levelly. “Merlin’s instruction?”

“We just thought we’d try something,” Roxy says. What she's doing couldn't reasonably be described as facing off with him, but Harry has been in hundreds, thousands, of the febrile situations with volatile people that end in either handshakes and cigars, or bloodshed. He knows how it feels. 

“I see,” he says. “Results?”

Shaz glances at Roxy, back at him. “Perfect. Er - well. Yeah. Good. Well done.”

He takes the three or four steps necessary and picks up the gun. The weight feels reassuring, necessary in his hand. He offers it back to her and says, “Thank you.”

***

He dresses carefully the next morning. His favourite suit, classic double-breasted, charcoal gray with an elegant narrow pinstripe. A clean white shirt and the Kingsman pink-stripe tie. His fingers fail him on the lifelong familiarity of tying a quietly superior half-Windsor and he throws it aside for pressing again later and picks another, identical. 

He's asked John to collect him early, eight o’clock, but by the time he's ready - immaculate - it's still only quarter past seven. He makes a cup of tea (down to half a sugar; the time for indulgence is past) and pulls a chair out to the narrow balcony that looks down the mews. Half of the neighbours are still off to their morning commutes to the City and Canary Wharf. 

Jacques sees him and after a double take he waves, a smile coming over his face bright enough to be seen even at some distance, and Harry finds himself oddly touched by it. They've been neighbours fifteen years and spoken about the same number of times, but it's nice to see Jacques a survivor, and to have someone notice that Harry is too, to care that he's come home to his neat little house in their quiet little street. 

He drinks his tea and thinks of nothing, watching the light change over the cobbles, until finally the cab turns down the street and he shuts the door of the balcony, abandons his mug on the side table, locks the front door behind him and checks it before climbing into the cab, greeting David quietly and asking for the shop. 

He spots the way David is looking at him in the rearview mirror, his avuncular concern. He’d like to snap, but restricts himself to looking deliberately out of the window: a discreet request for silence, which David - Harry’s regular driver for over ten years now, including a hundred-miles-per-hour jump over an opening Tower Bridge that would make the producers of the James Bond films weep with envy - respects. 

“Good morning, Arthur,” Harry says, sweeping into the dining room and surveying the enormous spread of food. “Are you expecting a crowd?”

“No,” Eggsy says, looking over the food himself and squaring his shoulders a bit, defensive. “I thought - I wasn't sure what you'd have. They said this was all stuff you had for breakfast.”

Well, they’re not wrong. The side table is covered with samples of pretty much everything Harry has ever chosen for breakfast in over thirty years of working at Kingsman, continental and cereal and toast and even the brief and unlamented period he'd tried the cabbage soup diet, after some hurtful remarks about the tightness of his favourite jacket from Merlin, who'd been paranoid - rightly - about losing his hair at the time. To finish it off, as Harry moves to pour a coffee Graham, who's done silver service at Kingsman for almost as long as Harry's been an agent, arrives with two plates bearing full cooked breakfasts. 

Harry turns an amazed eye on Eggsy, who sits down with an audible thump, picks at a croissant and mumbles, “I just thought - I didn't know what you'd have.”

He looks back at Harry then and there's something in his eyes of that one breakfast they'd shared, laughing as Harry talked him through table settings, a bright secure future ahead of them. He'd allowed his hand to linger a little too long on Eggsy's shoulder, and Eggsy had smiled up at him and teased him for his prim apron. 

“Thank you,” he says to Graham, taking his seat. It does smell spectacular, especially the enticing bacon which only the Savile Row cooks have ever got exactly as crispy as Harry likes and no more. “I'll have a Bloody Mary as well, please.”

“Bit early, innit?” Eggsy says. 

Harry casts a meaningful glance over the heaving sideboard. “It aids digestion. Do you want one?”

“Nah, mate,” Eggsy says. “Tomato juice and vodka, that’s fucking rank. I'll get a Buck's Fizz, though. If you're drinking.”

“A Bloody Mary and a Buck’s Fizz, thank you,” Harry says, and Graham sallies forth with a murmured _very good, Sir_ , looking faintly relieved to have proper instructions to follow. 

“Dig in,” Eggsy says anxiously, and Harry applies himself. The food is excellent, as it always is, and a pleasant nostalgic relief after the months of skilfully-cooked but bland meals in the rehab facility. 

“Delicious,” he says, and Eggsy gives him a beaming smile before he starts to eat himself. Someone's taken him in hand since Harry last saw him; Roxy, possibly, or Alastair: Eggsy wouldn't look out of place eating at one of Harry's father’s more formal suppers, dreary and correct as they’d been. There's nothing at all to say, nothing to teach, and it gives Harry an absurd sense of disappointment, that in this at least Eggsy is already beyond him.

“How are your family?” Harry asks, when he’s had a fortifying sip of Bloody Mary and Graham has shimmered back out of the room. Christ, but it’s all familiar; how many breakfasts had he had with Alan and then Chester, sitting in this same chair, looking at the same bloody ghastly green flock wallpaper. Eggsy’s sandy head bent industriously over his breakfast isn’t even out of place, his hair waved perfectly and gelled over his forehead in a mirror of Harry’s own style, his shoulders broad under the immaculate seams of his suit jacket.

“Yeah, they’re - you all right?” Eggsy says, looking up, bright with concern, and there, that’s different. Although Eggsy’s accent in the meeting yesterday had been different, hadn’t it, that estuary English all the young smart set used now; Harry isn’t sure what he thinks about Eggsy’s reversion to his own natural accent with Harry. It’s careless, probably, and that’s something he can if not reprove then at least suggest Eggsy consider, but - it’s rather nice. That sign of the old Eggsy, the Eggsy Harry remembers.

“Perfectly,” he says. His Bloody Mary appears to be finished. Eggsy pushes the jug of orange juice over to him, eyes unreadably pale, and Harry pours himself a glass. “Your family?”

“They’re all right,” Eggsy says. “Merlin’s been good. Dead good, actually, I just had to blink and Mum’s got a house, Dais is in playschool, sorted.”

“And your stepfather? He’s… ‘sorted’?”

Eggsy grimaces. “Yeah. Well, mostly. Yeah. Mum’s still a bit - she let me put a thing on her phone, she can’t call him now when she’s pissed, and she don’t ring him when she’s sober, so it’s okay, usually. I dunno. Sorry. You don’t want to hear about all that.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I weren’t interested,” Harry says. Or if he hadn’t been trying to buy a little time, perhaps, but in any case: “Eggsy, I need to tell you that I’m very sorry, for the way you and I left things.”

“Are you?” Eggsy says. He’s watching Harry intently, a forkful of food hovering forgotten halfway to his mouth. A baked bean drops off it and Harry follows its journey back to the plate.

That’s really all the apology Harry had had planned; he wasn’t expecting Eggsy to actually want to _discuss_ it. “Well, yes. I know better than to rush off with things left unsaid. I should have made sure you understood that I was very proud, of how well you’d done.”

“Were you?” Eggsy says. His eyes are glittering and Harry can’t quite meet his gaze. He cuts a piece of toast into soldiers instead, breaks the yolk of his fried egg and dips one carefully inside.

“Yes, I was,” he says. “I _am_. I can see it hasn’t been easy, taking on Arthur.”

Eggsy laughs then, a choking thin bark of a sound, and sits back in his chair. “Hasn’t been _easy_. Yeah, no, it ain’t been easy, Harry. Just the fucking paperwork, bruv. So much shit needs doing, I spend my whole life sitting there like a div and Merlin going, _I just need your signature, there, Arthur_ , and I’m thinking, what the fuck did I just put my name on. Only it ain’t my name.”

“If you’re not getting the administrative support you need -” Harry says, and Eggsy gives him a scornful, dull look.

“It’s not the _admin_ , Harry, Jesus Christ.”

“There’s a lot that comes with the name,” Harry says slowly. “That’s - it would have been true if you’d taken up Lancelot, as well. An adjustment period is natural.”

“ _Adjustment period_ ,” Eggsy says. His voice cracks and Harry very nearly reaches for him, picks up the mill instead and peppers the rest of his eggs into inedibility. “Do you know what you have to do, before they make you the new Arthur, Harry?”

Harry says, “I know there’s some ceremony, or something. A small private ritual.” He remembers that, from when Chester had assumed Arthur. Harry had been in his early thirties, ten years and more an agent, about five years away from meeting Lee Unwin. The senior Knights had called it the ordeal, and spoken of it in hushed tones, and Harry and Merlin had laughed at their pompousness; ten years after that the old head of the Merlin department had retired, and Merlin had gone missing for three nights and returned pale and still and crowned, and they hadn’t laughed about such things again.

“Fuck _you_ , small private ritual,” Eggsy says, with more bitterness than heat. “Forget it. I wasn’t supposed to say anything.”

“Right,” Harry says. Angry, useless curiosity fills him, guilt that he prefers not to examine too closely, and he swallows it down with another gulp of orange juice, bits of pulp sticking in his throat and making him cough. “Of course.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Eggsy says, watching him again. “You’re really - you’re okay?”

“As you see,” Harry says, and gets up to ring the bell for Graham: he could really fancy another drink.

***

“Cheers,” Giles says, and Harry raises his pint into the toast. “To coming home.”

“To coming home,” Harry echoes, a vice-like headache starting to torment the base of his skull, and takes a long drink, the Guinness cool and peaty-rich in his mouth. “How've you been?”

“Getting along, getting along,” Giles says. He clinks a manicured nail against his wine glass and sighs. “It was a bad business, Harry. Not sure being in a coma for a couple of weeks wasn't the best way to deal with it, to be honest.”

“Do you think?” Harry says. He watches his hand shake on his glass, making almost indiscernible ripples in the creamy surface. “The family all got through it, I hope?”

“Mostly,” Giles says. “Look, let’s not drag it all up again. It's not what I wanted to talk about.”

Harry inclines his head respectfully. It had seemed odd to him, when he'd woken some weeks after, the way the world seemed to have silently agreed to shuffle V-Day under the rug, as if the empty places where there should have been people had always been so. There are no official estimates of how many had died, no column inches taken up with righteous opinions on what caused it and how nothing so terrible can be allowed to happen ever again. All of the deaths seem mere black shadows under the eyes of the living. 

Harry says, “You want to talk about Arthur, I suppose?”

“I've absolutely nothing against him as a person,” Giles says, “I know he was your candidate, and - no, really, Harry, don't give me that look. He's not our sort, no, but he's a very bright, very capable, decent young man, and all that does not somehow qualify him to be Arthur.”

“What did Chester do for us recently, when we really come down to it?” Harry says. 

“Stayed out of our bloody way,” Giles says flatly. “Didn't attempt to fix things that aren't broken. That boy has introduced more idiocy in the last six weeks than Chester tried in his whole tenure!”

“Maybe if you gave it a chance you'd find it isn't idiocy,” Harry says. “You swore loyalty to Kingsman, didn't you?”

“Don't you dare question my loyalty,” Giles says quietly. “You know that's not fair. Not wanting change for the sake of change, when we’re already at a low, isn't disloyal. I'd be doing the organisation a disservice not to mention my misgivings.”

“Misgivings is one thing,” Harry says. He leans closer to Giles, aware of the slight ridiculousness of two spies locked in secret discussions against their own agency. “Contemplating a coup is quite another, Giles. Come on now.”

Giles raises his chin, his jaw tight in a way that would have been a flush on another man. “It's not a coup to plan an orderly transition to someone more suited to the role. One of our most senior agents. A favourite of the previous Arthur, the natural heir to the leadership.”

“Kingsman agents don't allow themselves to be led,” Harry says. “It's mere management. A figurehead. And the _previous Arthur_ was a fucking traitor, Giles. I don't want it.”

Giles leans forward, gaze fastened on Harry’s in a way that’s frankly quite uncomfortable. Harry copes with it by meeting his gaze with all the disinterest he can muster. “If it were a figurehead, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Harry... whatever your personal preferences, you must see this is the only way.”

“I don't want it,” Harry says again, more forcefully. “I'm backing Eggsy. I don't want to talk about this again.”

***

Harry doesn't go up to the estate the next day. Much as he might wish not to admit it, his body has changed over the months of recovery, and his pride is hurt more by going about in suits that don't quite fit correctly than it is by having to present himself for measuring and ordering new ones. 

“The usual set, Sir?” Christopher says, wrapping his tailor’s chalk in a piece of felt before he pops it back in his pocket, then folding Harry’s pattern carefully. The thin paper crackles; it's still the original, with all the changes built on since Harry was a skinny fresh twenty-one-year-old.

Harry catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and then, arrested, turns and looks at himself properly. It makes him wince to see his charcoal pinstripe marked up with alterations to go onto the revised pattern, but - well. Perhaps it wouldn't do him any harm to embrace the new, for once. 

“I'll have a replacement for this one,” he says, slipping out of the jacket and leaving it hung over the corner of the mirror. “But otherwise, I think I might be feeling a bit adventurous. What would you recommend?”

Christopher leads him out into the shop with a quiet look of pleasure, and they spend an enjoyable hour or two with endlessly refilled mugs of tea, held fastidiously far from the swatches Christopher pulls and has Harry examine. He rubs them all between his fingers, even leans down to smell some of the heavier wools, enjoying the simple sensuality of it, imagining the fabrics on his body. 

Fabrics chosen, they move onto design and cut, Christopher offering several small tweaks - modernisations - with an unbridled joy in his eyes that does more than anything else to suggest, irritatingly, that at some point Harry had overshot classic and sailed straight into old-fashioned. 

They've settled on three new suits, apart from the charcoal, and moved into general industry gossip - greatly and scandalously informed, Christopher having been a fixture behind Kingsman’s counter for decades and adored by everyone on Savile Row, and Harry is bittersweetly impressed to realise after some time that he's been given all the news he needs of V-day losses, gently and unobtrusively. 

Harry checks his watch and makes his excuses in time for Christopher to start his closing time routine. He’s in the changing room brushing off the last of the chalk and shuffling back into his jacket when he hears the bell over the shop door ring stridently, as if the door’s been flung open hard; he finds he’s at the door, his hand groping for the gun he’d bloody taken off after he’d been measured with it on, and then he notices he’s relaxing again: all before he even registers it’s Eggsy’s voice he’s hearing.

Eggsy’s rising voice. Harry opens the door slightly, and frowns when he hears, “- fucking told you I’d be in later!”

That’s enough of fucking _that_. “Eggsy,” he says sharply, striding out into the shop, and to his credit Eggsy shies back a little, looking not at Harry but at Christopher; shamed to have spoken to him so, not shamed to have been caught. Harry says, “Is there a problem?”

“Mr Unwin is expecting a visitor later,” Christopher says calmly. “Graham will be minding the door.”

“This is still a functioning tailor,” Harry reminds Eggsy. “Christopher isn’t your diary secretary.”

“Yeah, I know,” Eggsy says. Harry is unwillingly, unpleasantly, dragged into a vivid brief memory, _I want the name of the bloke you was wiv’ in that pub!_ , but unlike his stepfather Eggsy’s anger is a bright-flash thing, quickly burnt out. Eggsy adds, “Sorry,” to Christopher, subdued.

As he passes Harry on the way up the stairs to Arthur’s office, head down and shoulders hunched, Harry reaches out and touches his arm, says quietly, “I don’t expect to hear you speaking that way to your staff.”

Eggsy is turned into him, just a little. He looks at Harry briefly, his eyes rimmed with exhaustion, his mouth twisting. He nods sharply and trudges up the stairs.

“Does that happen often?” he asks Christopher, once he’s quite sure they’re alone.

“Occasionally,” Christopher allows. He has the tolerant, slightly remote look he’s used while teaching generations of new agents their place. “He always apologises, he didn’t need to be told. He’s a nice lad. It’s been a lot for him.”

“You head off if you like,” Harry says. “I’ll lock up.”

Christopher goes off, in his beautiful cashmere coat, and Harry duly locks up behind him, leaving the intercom switched up to the kitchen for this visitor of Eggsy’s. Then he goes upstairs himself, leaving the shop dim and cool and quiet. Harry has never really liked the shop in darkness, too primed to make phantom assailants of every fashionably dressed mannequin.

He knocks on the door, softly; when there’s no response, three smart raps. There’s still no answer.

“Arthur,” he says. He flips his glasses to the x-ray setting and checks the handle: locked. He could pick it easily enough. 

Probably. It is Arthur’s door lock, in a Kingsman stronghold. No knowing what little surprises Merlin might have put in there.

He says, “Eggsy.”

He waits for a while in the silence, and then he leaves.

***

“What's this about?” Eggsy says, ungraciously, and slams himself into Arthur’s seat at the head of the table. 

“I think we’d assumed you'd called it,” Alastair says. He pours a cup of tea, adds milk and two lumps of sugar, eyes Eggsy and adds a third, and pushes it towards Eggsy. Harry, in between them, passes it on without comment and Eggsy slumps in his chair, manages a quick grimace-smile of thanks and drains half of it. It's steaming, Eggsy's lips turning rich pink from the heat, and he cradles the cup between his fingers after. 

“I called it,” Merlin says and Harry doesn't look round at any of his fellow agents. There's nothing unusual about that - Merlin runs everything and everyone knows it, and meetings about operations are usually a summons under his banner - but with previous Arthurs the polite fiction would always have been preserved that this sort of full-Table session was at the behest of their leader alone. 

“What for? More recruitment shit?” Eggsy says, frowning. His secretary, Dan, steps forward to discreetly offer a paper file. Eggsy waves him off, impatiently, and taps into the tablet in front of him; he stares at it for a moment and then Dan steps forward again and takes it from him, flicks through a few pages and puts it back on the table in front of Eggsy, the entire complement of agents watching. 

“To discuss Kingsman’s response to the Statesman proposal,” Merlin says. “You agreed to it. When we met yesterday.”

“Yesterday,” Eggsy mutters, flicking restlessly through documents on his tablet, but he doesn't say anything else and Merlin sweeps on. Roxy, on Eggsy's other side and directly opposite Harry, meets Harry's gaze with flat eyes. 

“I'm not reading my emails,” Giles says placidly, hologram shifting before the signal strengthens and gives the illusion of planting him solidly back in the chair. “Could somebody be so good as to enlighten the group?”

“In light of the chaos arising from the exploding heads of state, Statesman think it might be nice if the Council were to take a role in smoothing some people’s roads to power,” Roxy says. “In the interests of returning the world to stability as soon as possible.”

“We’ve never been political,” Harry points out. “Fucking terrible idea.”

Eggsy says, “Don't mean we shouldn't never be. And you, read your fucking emails.” He shoots Harry a furiously ironic look and adds to Giles, “Roxy ain't your fucking secretary, you get me?”

“I don't believe I implied that she was,” Giles says with flawless public school courtesy, shining and cold. “You do jump to conclusions, Arthur.”

“You can take a running -” Eggsy starts; Roxy makes the barely tangible upper body movement that accompanies a sharp kick from a seated position and he stops.

“Merlin,” Alastair says, softly. Harry curbs Giles with a look, over the table and two thousand miles, and Daniel pushes the plate of biscuits round the table, with an appealing, anxious look; he detests arguments. Eggsy takes a ginger nut and chews on it, resentfully.

Merlin clears his throat and says, “Galahad, you’re against, then. Would anyone like to second? If Arthur’s in favour -”

“I didn’t say I’m in favour,” Eggsy says. “I said maybe we could be more political. I don’t think it’s a great idea to let bloody Statesman pick whoever they want, and then what? Give them cash? Rub out a few Xs and stick new ones in for their bloke?”

“I don’t think they’d stoop to outright electoral fraud,” Giles says, sounding like he thinks nothing is beneath them. 

“No,” Harry says. “It’ll be a few words in a few ears. Favours and threats, where we have the leverage. Cash, certainly.”

“Are we talking funding, or outright bribery?” Roxy says.

“Both,” Daniel says. “They’re not just talking about operating in the US. A lot of the territories they think need influencing operate backhanders as a way of life.”

“We ain’t backing this,” Eggsy says flatly.

“I agree,” Giles said. “I think Kingsman should object to this in the strongest possible terms.”

“Agreed. It’s not what we’re here for,” Alastair says, and Daniel murmurs assent; Alexander looks up, also a hologram, and gives an absent nod.

“Is that a wider principle?” Merlin says. “Historically the Kingsman agencies have dealt with crises. If there’s a role for taking more of a hand in infrastructure…”

“I’m not sure there is,” Harry says. “Whatever happened to the charitable arm? I think there’s certainly an argument that we’re sitting on a lot of wealth that could be channelled usefully, but there’s no call to be getting involved in government.”

“Dissolved in the nineties,” Merlin says. “Bit of unpleasantness with the Charity Commission.”

“Sorry, this is beside the point,” Eggsy says. “This objection - we’re in charge, yeah? We’re the most important, we’re in charge of all them. So I just got to go in to that Council meeting and tell them where to get off. Yeah?”

Harry becomes aware that although nobody is looking at him, he has the suffocating attention of every man in the room. (Roxy is focusing on Eggsy, not him, and then as a mulish expression plasters over Eggsy's face, she turns her attention to Harry as well, quite openly, and raises her eyebrow.)

“Yes, quite,” he says slowly. “And, well, no. Kingsman is nominally in charge, but it's primus inter pares, so we would usually take a more, ah, consensus approach - sorry, that means first among equals, it’s -”

“I _know what it fucking means_ ,” Eggsy says, venomous. His eyes are wide with something Harry is shocked to find, belatedly, he recognises: the hurt and mortification of Eggsy’s face, much less known then, less dear, in the Black Prince, when Harry had casually delivered the opinion that his father would have been ashamed of him. Just before Eggsy’d...

“I know how to _hold a bastard conversation_ , Harry, and this is my fucking show, yeah, so why don’t you shut the fuck up and _speak when you’re fucking spoken to_?”

… hit back.

“Apologies, Arthur,” he says thinly, and sits back, posture perfect and hands folded in front of him on the table, receding from the conversation.

He stays like that for the rest of the discussion. Eggsy softens towards him, his body curving subtly towards Harry’s and one swift glance going unmet, but he doesn’t speak to Harry again, doesn’t invite him in, so Harry bites his tongue while his fellow agents try to persuade Eggsy to take a gentler approach, and when the meeting is over he’s the first to leave.

***

Harry retires to the front terrace as twilight falls, with a drink - well, a crystal tumbler and a half-full bottle - and a tablet tracking all the active missions. The comforting bulk of the building rises over him and cradles him between the grand sweep of the staircases. It hides the full moon, but if he looks up here outside the confusion of the city he can still see a spark-strewn night sky. 

The ops list makes troubling reading. There are more of them than there are agents, who are doubling up or even tripling in one ill-advised effort last week. Harry appreciates the necessity, but it’s dangerous; it means the knights can’t do the level of their own legwork and prep they’re used to, which means higher risk, and heaps more on the already overworked shoulders of the handlers. But as he reads through the cases, he's inclined to accept Merlin’s assessment that there's nothing they can deprioritise. He pours another drink and checks the folder tracking the progress of the recruitment. 

He rests the tablet on his lap when he's finished, warm against his thighs, and cradles his brandy. Harry gazes out unseeing over the lawn, a little longer and less manicured than it would usually be at this point in the season, and lets his mind empty, concentrating on breathing in the heady scent of the climbing roses that wrap around the balustrade. 

He's lost enough in the moment that by the time he recognises Eggsy slouching out of the gloaming towards him Harry is close enough to see the sweat-dampness of his bare chest, a t-shirt tucked carelessly into the back of his ragged shorts, hair flopping out of its gel and over his forehead. Eggsy is very, very fit - Harry has just got through the records of all current agents, and he knows - so it must have taken a long run to get him tired and hot. 

And to get him as far out of his head as Harry was of his. He sees the moment Eggsy notices him, tucked into the shadow of the house; sees how Eggsy startles, much more than is warranted by simply noticing someone sitting quietly, in the safety of the estate that is Kingsman’s beating heart. Eggsy wipes sweat out of his eyes and looks over at Harry, raw and troubled, and Harry looks back at the starlight-limned strength of him and holds out his glass in an offer, roused to gentleness despite himself. 

“Good evening,” he says and he's sorry when his the loudness of his voice in the night breaks something; between them, within Eggsy, he's not sure. 

Eggsy shakes his head and says, “No. Thanks,” in an accent that wavers between his own and Harry's in the two short words. He trudges on past Harry and up the stairs and Harry doesn't try to keep him any further. 

***

“Sorry I’m late,” Harry says, pausing at the door of Merlin’s expansive office. It always jars a bit, after the shabby grandeur of the shop and the traditional elegance of the upper rooms of the estate: Merlin likes his room to reflect the technology that secures his influence, all white walls and brushed chrome, like a nineties designer kitchen.

“No, you’re bloody not,” Merlin says. He spins his chair to Harry, studies him for a moment, and then holds out a new pair of glasses. 

Harry accepts them as he takes the remaining seat, holds them up to the light: they’re the familiar frames he prefers, the tortoiseshell with their rounded edges, a little lighter than the ones he’s wearing and with one more button than he’s used to hidden cleverly on the inside of the right arm. He takes the old ones off and slips the replacements on; the balance is slightly different and he adjusts them until they’re comfortable.

“Stefano Arales,” Merlin says, and his biggest terminal resolves into the familiar green of an ongoing operation, a photo flashing up of someone who looks ordinary, apart from the discreet markers of intense wealth. “Runs a group of elite mercenaries specialising in rescuing rich, stupid people from kidnap and extortion.”

“We’ve run into him before, haven't we?” Harry says, studying the face before he looks at the notes scrolling alongside. “Not a very tasteful business, but a legitimate one.”

Merlin nods. “It was. In the wake of V-Day, he's taken to supplying his own customers. One arm does the kidnapping, the other does the recovery. Convenient.”

“And profitable,” Harry says. “How enterprising of him. Am I warning him, or shutting him down?”

“Neither,” Merlin says. “Recon only. He's got at least two kidnap victims at the moment, we need to know where he's holding them.”

It sounds plausible enough, but: “A walk in the park,” he says pleasantly. “I understood I was cleared for _action_. I've seen the files, I know how much higher priority work we have on.”

“This is the operation you’re assigned to,” Merlin says. He hands Harry the docket and Harry looks down at it, at the shapeless scrawl of Eggsy’s signature, the Arthur wax seal next to it.

***

Still, England’s interesting climate isn't the only reason no self-respecting Kingsman goes out for a walk in the park without his umbrella. 

Harry reflects on this, cheerfully, while spinning around one opponent, jabbing the next in the solar plexus with the end of his Rainmaker, and skidding to one knee to bring the length of it up sharply between the legs of the third. 

“Terribly sorry,” he says, sauntering back out into the hall and tapping the audio feed of his glasses back on. “I didn't quite catch that last bit.”

“It was that _under no circumstances were you to engage_ ,” Merlin says tautly. 

“Oh? Fancy. All’s well that ends well, though.”

There's a sharp breath, not quite familiar enough to be Merlin. Merlin says, “Galahad -” and then Eggsy cuts in, voice rough with exasperation and fear. “Galahad?”

“Arthur,” Harry says. Something burns in him at the sound of Eggsy’s voice, unexpected, and now when Harry is filled with adrenaline and the fierce pleasure of success. It makes him want to flaunt and flash; rub the fucking nursery job in Eggsy’s face so he can’t deny Harry’s skill, his need to be out here. “Kind of you to take the time to watch my little operation.”

Merlin has evidently won whatever squabble has gone on over possession of the comms. He says, “Galahad, repeat, you do _not_ have permission to engage Arales. Leave the building _now_.”

There are two more closed doors off the hall, and one staircase. Harry considers them all. There are voices coming from upstairs. 

“Get out of there,” Eggsy urges. 

“Galahad!” Merlin says. “What’s happening?”

The Rainmaker is drumming on the floor, the sort of dull thudding that tells tales of cellars, dugouts, space. Useful, but Harry’s not entirely sure he meant to do it. His hands are shaking.

Eggsy says, “That’s an order! Get out of there. _Please_ , Harry.”

The voices upstairs are turning into a dull roar, people rushing downstairs.

Harry takes off his glasses, slides them into his pocket, and raises his umbrella.

***

It's not a perfect mission, but what in this world is? He gets off the light aircraft home in spirits of medium height, at least, practically already tasting his satisfaction-of-a-job-well-done drink. 

It's most dimming of his good mood to be met by Merlin, flanked by two sturdy young handymen with fantastically uncomfortable looks on their faces: the sort who loiter around making the gardens nice and fixing things that need fixing and occasionally having A Word with techies who become enthusiastic with their inventions and visit mischief upon the rosebushes. 

“An honour guard,” Harry says, slowing as he comes up to them. “How kind.” Briefly - very briefly; stupid - he sees them as he would if they were threats. Take out Merlin first, obviously, and one would have to put him down permanently if one were going to put him down at all, and then the other two, simple enough, throw Helen out of her plane and it had sufficient fuel to get him back across the Channel and thence away. 

“You're to be confined to your rooms,” Merlin says flatly.

He does nothing of the kind, of course. He hands over his umbrella and allows the two sheepish lads to strip him of his shoulder holster and pocketed lighters and ring and calf sheathes. His gaze meets Merlin’s, heavily, towards the end and he's allowed to keep his shoes, which is all to the good: he certainly would have chosen the plane over being marched through the house in socks. 

“Arthur’s orders?” Harry asks. 

“Arthur’s orders,” Merlin says. 

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Harry points out, shaking off Ian’s tentative hand on his shoulder and taking himself off to his quarters with them trailing behind; he does have some bloody dignity. 

“Arthur’s orders,” Merlin says again, behind him. 

***

He chooses his pose deliberately. On the sofa, fully suited, legs crossed and a heavy crystal tumbler in his hand. Calculated to remind Eggsy of coming to Harry in the shop, that first night; to remind him that everything he is, is what Harry's made of him: what Harry has given him. 

He has to hold it about three quarters of an hour longer than he anticipated, and several more drinks in. Bloody rehab and the devastation it wrought on his long-nurtured tolerance: by the time Eggsy comes in, messy in shirtsleeves, looking pale and belligerent, Harry's half-cut, and feeling rather belligerent himself. 

“Good evening,” he says, and keeps his drink to himself this time. “I assume you realise you can’t hope to keep me here.”

“Yeah, but you’re here now,” Eggsy says, stiff and furious. “Ain’t got the booze cupboard stocked back up at home yet?”

Harry refuses to start shouting like a fishwife in his own rooms. “This is an overreaction and an insult.”

“You ignored orders!” Eggsy says. “Merlin - _me_ \- fuck’s fucking sake, Harry, you could’ve fucking _died_ , do you have any fucking clue what it’s like watching that -”

“I am a field agent of over thirty years’ standing and I know what the fuck I’m doing,” Harry says icily. “What the _fuck_ gives you the right?”

Stupid question. Eggsy is Arthur, he has the right. Harry finds he’s standing, stepping closer. He wants to put his hands on Eggsy, shake him, make him bloody _understand_. 

Eggsy looks vicious, stricken. “The fucking _right_ ,” he says hoarsely, shaking his head, Harry can no more look away from him than he would a man with a gun trained to his heart, and Eggsy's mouth on his is less of a shock than a revelation, new and strange and wonderful. 

Eggsy kisses desperately, despairingly, and Harry slides his hands into Eggsy’s hair and lets himself be dissolved by the onslaught, opens his mouth for Eggsy and moans when Eggsy gets Harry’s shirt untucked and clings fiercely, his restless skin-hungry touches roaming Harry’s back and hips.

The kisses from Eggsy’s mouth are sweeter than the words. Harry catches his lips again when Eggsy tries to talk to him, and again. Eggsy pressed against him is greedy and needy and rough, and Harry fumbles them up against the door to the bedroom, gets it open and falls them inelegantly the few steps and back onto the bed.

He can almost feel the blood rushing around his body. His cock is hard, pinched painfully inside his trousers, and his pulse thumps at the base of his skull, geometric flashes narrowing his vision when he opens his eyes and sees the intent on Eggsy’s face as he kisses Harry, so close. 

It’s nearly dizziness, the scent of Eggsy’s cologne - citrusy, cheap - mixing with salt as they start to sweat, dull roaring in his ears. Harry palms the back of Eggsy’s neck to slow the kisses to something slower, passionate instead of frenetic, the short hair at Eggsy’s nape prickling his palm.

“Harry,” Eggsy mutters against his mouth, pulls back and looks at him. He looks decadent and dangerous, his hair sticking up darkly, his lips kiss-swollen and reddened. Need makes a blur of his features and Harry isn’t sure whether that’s his vision or something actually in Eggsy, that softening. Eggsy is on him, between Harry’s legs, and between his legs when they press together is bulging hot and ready. Harry reaches for him, grips his hand over Eggsy’s dick and rubs him and watches how Eggsy changes when he’s being devastated by pleasure, how the classical strength of his face slackens and sweetens.

“Darling,” he murmurs, the endearment spilling from somewhere deep in his chest, nowhere in his conscious mind, and to stop any more he pulls Eggsy down onto him again. The room seems to shrink down at the same time, until Eggsy’s solid weight is everything, the world concentrated to the slick exploration of Eggsy’s tongue in his mouth, his round tight arse under Harry’s grasping fingers, his cock catching snugly against Harry’s. He thrusts up, helplessly, and Eggsy moans and jerks down into syncopation, Harry’s cock aching in the tightness of his underwear and trousers.

“Come _on_ ,” Eggsy says, impatient, sits up and yanks Harry with him, and they’re still kissing urgently while Eggsy pushes at his jacket and pulls at his shirt, getting a couple of his own buttons undone before he’s back on Harry again. 

He sighs the first time he flattens his palm on Harry’s chest and his kisses travel clumsily over Harry’s face. Eggsy’s hand over his heart and Eggsy’s lips on his temple, on the scar there, and Harry fights back a vicious curl of panic and tears at Eggsy’s trousers, lets Eggsy strip him eagerly of the soft white cotton of his shirt and snatches his own trousers off, bares himself and Eggsy’s cock.

Eggsy is touching him gently, now, stroking all over Harry’s back and shoulders and chest like he’s in a dream. Harry tilts his hips back, meaningfully, awkward in their twined sitting positions, gets Eggsy’s fingers slipping trembling down into his crack. “Fuck,” Eggsy says, “fuck, Harry, really? Yeah, come on,” good quick boy; Harry doesn’t want to fucking _talk_ about this, just wants the relentless drive of Eggsy inside him. 

It’s hot and reckless already and Harry doesn’t have much, just a tube of cream in the bedside table for old worn hands. He gets it on his fingers now, smears it on Eggsy’s cock for him while Eggsy whines and strokes through his hair and misses kisses to smatter the corner of Harry’s mouth, his cheek, his jaw and throat. Eggsy’s cock is good, wide and pink and leaking at the exposed smooth head, firm taut balls underneath that Harry strokes too with his slippery hand so Eggsy cries out and his hips jerk, fucking air.

He lies back and pulls Eggsy onto him, wraps his leg around Eggsy’s waist and draws him close. “Don’t you need -” Eggsy says, and, “No,” Harry urges, but Eggsy’s already collected cream on his fingers from his cock and Harry makes an ugly punched-out sound as Eggsy fingers him, one finger tentatively circling his rim and sinking in deep.

“Fuck,” Eggsy says breathlessly. “No, you do, Harry, you’re so fucking tight,” and Harry grits his teeth and reaches down himself, slides a finger inside next to Eggsy’s. Eggsy has elegant, slender hands; Harry’s are bigger, rougher, and he bites his lip hard against the overfull overwhelm of the sensation, concentrates on the hurt sound Eggsy makes, staring at where both their fingers are inside Harry’s arse. He’s glad for the lack of worshipful frightening scrutiny and he can move then, crook his finger and groan into the simmering pleasure turning to a blaze, show Eggsy how to stretch him, how much he can take.

He pushes Eggsy’s hand out and his own, clutches at the sheet to wipe it clean, tugs Eggsy down to him. Eggsy comes, yearning easily down into another deep kiss, and Harry gets them sorted, Eggsy’s cock resting and sliding around his hole, wraps one hand around the back of Eggsy’s neck and with the other reaches down once more to pull at the cheek of his arse, opening himself up.

Eggsy is silent as he fucks inside Harry the first time. Barely even breathing, and Harry is quiet too, focusing on his hole giving way slowly, the dirty good sensation of being filled, trying to understand anew letting someone enter into his body. Eggsy kisses him again when he scrabbles at Eggsy’s nape and gets their lips together, as if he knows how badly Harry needs something else to ground himself in, the simpler pleasure of their mouths moving against one another.

It’s hot, the tiny space between them, the buttons of Eggsy’s shirt rubbing Harry’s chest where they’re clenched tight together. Harry knows how tight he is, feels it in how slow Eggsy goes, ruinously, until Harry is digging his nails into Eggsy’s back instead of begging, Eggsy panting out words Harry doesn’t listen to. 

It's bruising, but not as if Eggsy means to hurt; as if he wants badly to leave his mark, for one or the other or both of them to be unable to deny what's happened between them. Eggsy's cock drags thickly inside him, inevitable and irresistible, demanding Harry's full attention, everything in him pulled down to the swirling fury of orgasm building in his groin. He loses himself to it gratefully when it comes, falls alone into the blackening sharp-pleasure explosion of his senses and the gradual return of sight and sound and sensation.

Eggsy is looking at him hungrily when he looks up again. His eyes are prettily, vibrantly green, almost wet with effort and pleasure. He says, “Harry,” and Harry says, “ _Yes_ , Eggsy,” and at the sound of his name Eggsy comes, rocketing a pained cry out of his chest as his cock twitches and spurts inside Harry.

He feels sentimental after. Sad old fool that he is, he holds Eggsy close as the boy lies shivering on him, as he winds strands of Harry’s hair through his fingers and looks into Harry’s eyes and smiles and smiles. He feels Eggsy’s cock shrink inside him, clenches around it a couple of times, experimentally, to see what Eggsy does, which turns out to be gasp and bite his lip and say, “ _Harry_ ,” with operatic fervour. 

Eggsy is hot, heavy, and the sweat dries on Harry’s skin clammy and cold. When Eggsy slips out he wriggles until Eggsy slides obligingly off, closes his legs, thighs aching.

 _Everything_ is aching. He rolls onto his stomach, hesitates for a moment with his face buried in the pillow, which is rather disgusting with the leavings of his hair pomade; he must have been tossing his head around more than he’d realised, somewhere in the middle. He turns onto his cheek, facing Eggsy, shuts his eyes and feels butterfly-light kisses on the sides of his face, Eggsy carefully tracing his cupid’s bow with the tip of his tongue before he leaves a soft sideways kiss on the corner of Harry’s mouth. Harry can taste coppery blood; he’d bitten his lip, at some point, or perhaps Eggsy’s, and not noticed that either.

“Fuck,” Eggsy says, and giggles. “Can’t believe you… Harry. That - it was good, yeah? You were fucking great, I really…” 

He sounds slightly drunk. He’s running his hands over Harry’s back again, as if his fingertips are magnetised to skin; the bloody enthusiasm of the young. Harry startles as he feels Eggsy press gently at the wet mess of his arse, dipping a fingertip in at the cream and come and rubbing lightly at his rim. Eggsy hums to him, absent and sweet, stays shatteringly gentle, and Harry relaxes, lets him play.

Harry’s in a doze when he feels the curious, lewd flicker of a tongue on his hole. It's - uncomfortable, the peculiar sensation of slightly raspy damp tongue where he’s already sore, and somehow too intimate. He twitches and Eggsy moves, his warmth shifting over Harry's skin. There's a slow kiss on the small of his back, Eggsy's fingers clenching a little too tight on his hip, and Eggsy sits up. 

"I got to go," Eggsy says. Harry turns his head; he doesn't open his eyes, but he can see the play of light from a phone. 

"Of course," he says. He rolls over and stretches, opens his eyes to watch the way Eggsy's gaze falls over him, taut with heat and hope. "I think I'll go back home."

He's still got his bloody big mouth open, about to invite Eggsy to join him there whenever he's finished with whatever duty is calling, and Eggsy blinks and says, "What? But I - you're staying here."

Harry stares at him, and Eggsy looks back. He becomes slowly aware that Eggsy is still wearing most of his clothes, albeit rumpled and sweaty; his trousers are open, his cock still fat, a few buttons of his shirt undone and exposing his flushed muscled chest. And Harry is all but naked, absurdly still wearing his bloody socks, his own come smeared on his stomach and Eggsy's leaking from his well-fucked arse.

It’s like putting the specs on and getting the new, unpleasant view of things. The whole situation upturns around him, taking on a sordid cast. 

He rolls off the bed and plucks his dressing gown from the back of the door a few steps away. Pulling the cord tight around his waist feels like gathering himself back up. 

"Of course," he says coldly. "I read Merlin's report of the immediate aftermath in Valentine's bunker; I should have realised prisoners in cells are your type."

Eggsy was looking big-eyed, possibly even remorseful, at seeing Harry's reaction, but at that he's livid again, as if the brief interlude of their bodies moving perfectly together hadn't happened. "Fuck you," Eggsy snaps, scrambling off the bed himself. He buttons up his shirt, tucks himself in and fixes his trousers, runs his hands through his hair, and Harry tries not to notice Eggsy's fingers shaking. 

Eggsy pauses at the door, half-turning. "Good night," Harry says, "Arthur." He hears it come out as cutting and contemptuous as he's capable of; he thinks distantly he ought to remember the tone, for undercover work later.

Eggsy makes a choked sound and then the door is slamming shut behind him. 

Harry showers, cleans himself thoroughly without thinking about anything in particular, a nightcap balanced on the soap dish with a facecloth over it so water doesn't dilute the whiskey, not that the steam will do it much good either. 

Once he’s washed and wearing clean pajamas, he finds new sheets in the linen cupboard in the hall and makes the bed himself. Hospital corners, as he learned in boarding school, and the duvet turned neatly down. The pillowcase is cool against his aching head and he's quickly asleep. 

***

Harry takes breakfast in his rooms, which is entirely normal. He tries to tell himself he’s not listening hard for the snick of a lock turning; he hasn’t tested whether he’s actually locked inside, and he refuses to. Ian or one of his colleagues outside would be more useful to keep an agent in, or at any rate know in which direction he went, but if he’s not going to check the door he’s most definitely not going to open it up and stick his head out. It would be more of a humiliation to have watchdogs planted outside the door; he’s discomfited to realise he doesn’t know which way Eggsy would fall on that. 

There’s always the window, if he really feels the need. He’s on the second floor and has a view he’s always rather appreciated. It might be a bit inconvenient now but there’s certainly ways down, especially if one isn’t too concerned for the cleanliness of one’s shirt cuffs. 

He sends his breakfast plates off with Emily and then the morning stretches boringly ahead of him. No lock, he’s reasonably sure now, but he refuses to think about it. He rereads _Crime and Punishment_ instead, vindictively, even though it’s dull as fuck and he is quite tired and has to drink three cups of tea in an hour to stop himself nodding off again over it.

There’s a knock at about eleven and he says, “Thank fuck for that,” to nobody. Embarrassing: he’ll have to put a lid on it.

The door isn’t locked. Harry opens it to Christopher, laden with suitbags which Harry takes smoothly from him as he sweeps into the room like Oscar Wilde about to pull a gun on the wallpaper.

Christopher surveys the whole thing, Harry and tea and paperback and all, and rests a paternal, sorrowing eye on Harry which makes him feel pleasantly sympathised with. However, since he was sulking about being locked away he’s wearing casual trousers, a short-sleeved shirt, and a cardigan, and the wounded look on Christopher’s face as he takes it in is very affecting.

“There’s a shirt and new Oxfords in with the charcoal,” Christopher says faintly. “Please change. I mean, if you’d like to change, Sir.”

The new suits have come out very nicely. Harry puts on the one he considers most daring, a pale grey twill pinstriped with purple so dark it’s barely distinguishable from black. The usual Kingsman tie doesn’t quite work and he adds the one Christopher has put in the bag instead, lavender with a geometric pattern in the same dark purple. There’s a waistcoat, as well, although three piece suits have never really been Harry’s thing.

He realises he’s preening anxiously at himself in the mirror and stops. Christopher comes up behind him and says, “It’s looking very good, Sir,” with craftsman’s satisfaction. The fit is perfect, of course, but Christopher fusses over him anyway, brushing at the shoulders of the jacket and straightening the trousers over his hips until everything is just so, and Harry relaxes under the capable familiarity of his hands.

They work in quiet tandem to get the other two suits hung up and away in the wardrobe and Harry enjoys his own moment of calm, seeing them arrayed there. His armour, ready to go out and do battle. Christopher collects up the suit Harry was wearing yesterday, to take away for cleaning and repair, and now Harry’s new pattern is certified likely some adjustment as well. If it’s worth the trouble; the bulletproof fabric has a short shelf-life, and every suit is thoroughly tested after an active mission to make sure it still provides the necessary protection.

He sees Christopher out. As suspected, Ian gives him a sheepish smile from a folding chair in the hallway, where he’s hunched over and playing on his phone. “Good afternoon,” Harry says to him, and sees himself back into his room.

Lunch arrives with Merlin.

“We do still debrief under the new regime, then?” Harry says. He gives Merlin his back, deliberately, and chooses a ham and pickle sandwich. “I was starting to wonder.”

“Well, you weren’t going anywhere, were you,” Merlin says, and reaches for the coronation chicken roll. “Ow! Don’t be greedy, Harry, I didn’t have any breakfast.”

“Being worked too hard, I suppose,” Harry complains. “Meanwhile I’m confined to my room like a naughty child.”

“I think he’ll consider time off for good behaviour.”

“It’s an utter abuse of power,” Harry says. “Everything went perfectly well! Agents have _never_ been interfered with like this. I expected better of him.”

“Harry,” Merlin says slowly. “When you say it went ‘perfectly well’ - you are aware it was a complete mess?”

“Oh, not you too,” Harry says. He picks at his sandwich. It’s got tomato on it, overripe and a bit slimy, and he excavates between the bread and ham to take it out and drop it on a napkin. “I needed to get my feet under me, perhaps, but it was fine.”

Merlin says, “Harry, you _crumbled_. Dropped your gun, for God’s sake, like the rawest recruit! I thought he was going to have a heart attack, he was so worried. He looks up to you.”

God, the dramatics. Harry had dropped his gun, yes, and that was unusual, but a ‘mess’ was a bit bloody rich. He says stiffly, “Evidently not, clapping me in here. I brought Arales in.”

“When you’d been ordered not to engage at all! We wanted something easier for your first run, and we were right, Harry.” Merlin has abandoned his own hard-won sandwich. He’s watching Harry, unblinking, shiny head furrowed.

“Orders, again,” Harry says. He abandons the second half of his sandwich, and goes to open a window, get some air inside. He pauses for a moment, staring out. In the distance the pack of recruits are doing some sort of shooting exercise. He can see the route down, easy even in the steady rain that’s dropping off the eaves, a stroll out for milk and the morning papers; drainpipe, roof of the east wing extension, drop onto the shrubbery. “I thought you’d come to debrief me, not berate me.”

“You got a hostage _shot_ ,” Merlin says.

“Oh, in the arm,” Harry says disdainfully. “A flesh wound! Better than a shot to -”

“- the head?” Merlin cuts in, with a thin smile. “Bloody pull it together, Harry. You'll need clearing for active duty, again, and I suggest you spend some time thinking about how you're going to persuade Arthur you're ready to even try. Why don’t we pick this up again when you’re seeing a bit more clearly?”

Merlin fucks off after that, leaving Harry alone, fuming. More tests, demands, hoops to jump through, when there’s so much to be done. All Harry wants is to do his bloody job.

He picks up the phone and dials the extension for Arthur’s office. “Hello, Dan. Might Arthur be able to make some time for me this afternoon?”

“Of course, Galahad. Does four o’clock suit?” Dan says, quickly enough it’s clear he’s been expecting the call. Harry agrees the appointment, checks the time now - coming on for two - and goes to look at the booze cupboard. It _is_ very well stocked, and the sun is setting on the British Empire somewhere.

***

Ian knocks softly on the door at ten to four and carries on at a discreet distance behind Harry as he walks through the halls to Arthur's office, correcting only once at the front staircase. Chester had had a palatial office and attached sitting room in what had once been the family's bedrooms, with sweeping views over the grounds. Eggsy has chosen a smaller ground floor office, just off the great entrance hall and therefore much closer to the fireplace, taller than Harry and wider than his outstretched arms, that conceals the entrance to the sprawling underground complex where Merlin, the senior handlers, and research staff spend most of their time.

It's still fairly grand inside, but Eggsy has brought his own touches. The paisley carpet has been pulled up and the oak flooring polished to a high golden shine, and there are short sheer curtains to block the glare rather than heavy, dusty velvet drapes to hide the light.

The mantelpiece has pictures of Eggsy's mother and sister and there are none of the indifferently-skilled oil portraits and landscapes that infest the rest of the Kingsman properties. There are prints and photographs instead, a couple of sixties lithographs of nasty concrete London architecture that conceivably remind Eggsy of where he'd grown up, and one or two more adventurous modern art pieces, including one of those Tracey Emin neon things spelling out 'Fuck you', which Harry rather likes, although its placement directly over Eggsy's head and in full sight of anyone taking the visitor's chair is a bit on the nose. He can see Eggsy's personality in the choices, although he can discern the influence of Clarissa, who curates the Kingsman art collection, in the overall harmony of it all.

“Good afternoon, Arthur,” Harry says. He pauses next to the chair while Eggsy keeps scribbling on the other side of the desk. That's the traditional Arthur piece, at any rate, dark wood and imposing. He wonders if anyone has shown Eggsy the myriad secret compartments inside. Perhaps Harry can, if he doesn't end up storming out. Chester hadn't used it much, by the end, the matching chair had hurt his back; sofa government, Merlin had called it, when drunk enough, with a shake of his head.

Eggsy looks up at him eventually and Harry realises that what he'd taken as a deliberate display of power, and massively irritating, was just harriedness. Eggsy looks exhausted, as if he hasn't slept since he left Harry's bed last night. He's changed his shirt but the suit is the one he'd been wearing yesterday.

Eggsy seems wary, gazing at Harry like it was him who'd been called to the headmaster's office rather than the other way round. “Galahad,” he says. “Why are you just – shit, sorry. Sit down, sit down.”

Harry takes the offered seat without further comment. Eggsy looks back at whatever report he's reading and pushes it away, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn't actually know you was coming, and - I haven't stopped all day.” He glances mournfully at a full cup of tea standing on the edge of his desk. From the slight skin on the top it looks to have been there a few hours at least, and stone cold.

“I can make another appointment,” Harry says. He finds he doesn't want to, though; he wants to stay here: and worse, he wants to take Eggsy in his arms, caress the headache away from his temples, kiss him there and look after him. Slow tenderness warms him from the inside, sweet and unbidden.

Eggsy shrugs. There's something so resigned in the motion, exactly the kind of hopelessness Harry had imagined Kingsman would rescue Eggsy from him, give him some agency and choice in his own life. It sits sadly here in the glorious surroundings of the estate. Eggsy says, “Nah, if we're gonna have another row why wait? Merlin told me you wasn't exactly reasonable this morning.”

“Oh, did he,” Harry says, immediately springing a shiny new grudge. “I don't think there's any need for you and I to row.”

“You got to do the tests again,” Eggsy says flatly. It seems they're going to ignore what passed between them, then, and that's sensible, of course, the best way to go, Arthur can't be shagging one of his knights; it would unbalance the Table, perhaps the whole organisation, much better to forget all about it.

It doesn’t feel ignorable. Here, looking at Eggsy’s unhappiness, it feels huge, significant. Impossible to resist.

“I'm happy to do the tests again,” Harry says. He leans back slowly, makes himself comfortable in his chair, watches Eggsy’s gaze sketch his legs as he crosses them.

“Really?” Eggsy says. “That ain't what Merlin said.”

“Merlin doesn't actually know everything,” Harry points out. “He just likes to pretend he does.”

“So you'll do them again,” Eggsy says, doubtfully.

“Certainly.”

“And you'll take orders, next time.”

“I'll do whatever you like,” Harry says softly and Eggsy throws him a startled glance. It's prettier than he'd probably like, his features handsome and his eyes wide, showing off the changeable, beautiful hazel-green of them. Harry could find several hours' entertainment gazing into those eyes, which is a thought so soppy he should probably go and throw himself in the pond to cool off, but he lets his appreciation fill his own eyes and body, acknowledging that the attraction that's always simmered between them wasn't burnt off last night but is blazing hotter and higher instead, challenging Eggsy to notice it too.

“She's a top bird, you know, Tilde," Eggsy blurts, with that peculiar mixture of defensiveness and aggression that they seem to bloody teach on estates like Eggsy's. It's satisfying to know his thoughts are going in a similar way; that last night is as vivid and bleeding into this conversation for Eggsy as it is for Harry. "She's been dead good, with ideas and stuff for all this. And we never, actually. Not that it's your fucking business."

"No, I know. Sorry," Harry says. An olive branch, and he has to stop himself from reaching out to Eggsy physically as well.

"I felt fucking rotten after," Eggsy says, more quietly. "There's me, you know, and then we found out - you was in a fucking hospital bed with half your skull off."

"I know," Harry says again. The distance between them, the weight of the desk, seems to be blurring away. Eggsy is looking at Harry's mouth. "It's all right."

Eggsy makes a half-dissenting noise, but seems too tired to challenge further. Harry adds, “And it wasn’t _half_ my skull. Hardly any at all. _And_ they’d got rid of it. I was very put out. I wanted to frame it and put it in the loo.”

Eggsy is surprised into a laugh at that, raw and real. “Yeah, I bet you did. Right next to Mr Pickle, yeah?”

“He was always an excellent guard dog,” Harry says nostalgically. “It would have been fitting.”

They smile at each other for a minute, like a pair of idiots, and then Eggsy says, reluctantly, “I guess that's – okay then? Unless there's something else?” He sounds like he wants there to be something else but his gaze is creeping back to his papers, and the difference from his animation speaking to Harry just now couldn't be more marked.

“Why don't I make you another cup of tea first?” Harry offers.

“All right,” Eggsy says, surprised. “If you don't mind, yeah. That'd be nice.”

There's a small tea point in the corner of the office, with a kettle and small fridge full of milk and beer, and a tray with biscuits and sugar. Another difference from Chester, who had relied utterly on his staff to keep him fed and watered and possibly wouldn't have known what to do with a teabag if his life had depended on it.

There's an idiosyncratic collection of mugs. For Eggsy Harry selects the one with reindeer made creatively from the painted imprints of a little hand, and, inviting himself to stay, another one bearing a garish picture of a tower and the immortal legend _my mate went to Blackpool and all I got was this lousy mug_ for himself.

The water in the kettle has been there god knows how long, but it seems unlikely Eggsy will notice or care whether it's freshly drawn. Harry flicks it on to boil, finds a PG Tips teabag for Eggsy and a Lady Grey teabag for himself in the small array for guests. He adds two teaspoons of sugar to Eggsy's mug and looks over his shoulder. Eggsy looks up as if he can feel the attention and smiles at him, a small painfully young thing that makes Harry feel simultaneously teenage-crush young and a million years old.

He carries the mugs back over to Eggsy's desk. Eggsy looks up again, briefly, and shoves a piece of paper under Harry's hand for a coaster; he winces internally at the heat on the desk but puts it down.

He perches on the desk next to Eggsy instead of going back around to the visitor's chair. “What are you working on?”

“Budgets,” Eggsy says dismally. “I never seen so many fucking noughts in my life, Harry.”

“We're not exactly restrained in our spending,” Harry allows, thinking slightly guiltily of some of the more outrageous expense claims he's had waved through.

“You're telling me,” Eggsy mutters. “I bet King never had to deal with this, did he?”

“Not as he got older, I don't think he did, no,” Harry says. “There probably should have been more oversight. You could try having a chat to Aditi in the logistics team.”

“Not one of the accountants?” Eggsy says. He grabs his tablet and Harry can see him flicking through emails.

“Not formally. But she used to have a lot to do with the numbers. Knows where the bodies are buried.”

“Right, yeah,” Eggsy mutters. He puts the tablet down again and grimaces at it. “It ain’t exactly the glam James Bond life I was promised.”

“No,” Harry says, and it is a pity, that. Eggsy had done so well in the recruitment; he’s young, fit, talented: he should be out in the field, not getting shattered and resentful behind a desk. “No, it’s not what I had in mind for you.”

Eggsy sits back at that, drawing a finger down his tablet before he sighs and rubs ineffectually at the smears there with his shirt cuff. Really something Harry should correct - Eggsy's pristine white shirts won't stay pristine long if he insists on doing that - but Harry's gaze is drawn to his fingers, dextrous and slender, and his hole throbs with a vivid sense memory of them inside him. He shifts and Eggsy's attention is caught by the movement, his gaze travelling hot as a touch slowly over Harry's thighs, his hips, his groin and stomach and chest, as if he can tell what Harry's thinking about.

“I was supposed to be making a difference,” Eggsy says. “Like your front pages. I was trying, here... I thought you’d approve, Harry. You think change is good, yeah? You brought my dad in, and me.”

“You can have too much of a good thing,” Harry says carefully. Eggsy looks down, strain touching hard at his eyes and mouth, his damnably quick brain throwing up god knows what, and Harry says, “Eggsy -” and when Eggsy looks up he leans down and catches Eggsy's mouth.

The kiss turns deep fast, spilling Harry into the easy pleasure of Eggsy's responsiveness to him, the way Eggsy gives himself wholeheartedly. A bare moment of contact and Eggsy is already standing up to participate fully in the kiss, leaning in between Harry’s legs where he sits on the desk, his fingertips soft as he raises a hesitant hand to Harry's cheek to hold him in the embrace. Eggsy’s body against his is warm and lithe; he can feel Eggsy getting hard against his leg and his own cock stirs with interest.

“I’m supposed to be working,” Eggsy says, unconvincingly, breathless and nudging Harry’s head to his throat hopefully. Harry spreads his fingers on the small of Eggsy’s back, pulls Eggsy closer into him and kisses down the smooth pale skin of his neck, luxuriating in the way Eggsy shivers when he pulls Eggsy’s tie loose and undoes his top buttons and follows with his mouth, sucking a pink mark on the hollow of his throat, scraping his teeth very lightly over the prominence of Eggsy’s collarbones. 

“You’re allowed a break,” Harry says. He nudges his knuckles between Eggsy’s legs, checking, and is filled with ignoble but unmistakeable satisfaction at finding Eggsy strikingly hard for him, his cock a visible hot bulge spoiling the line of his suit. Harry’s always liked the look of an erection in perfectly fitted trousers, the obscenity of it, the simultaneous offence and tribute to the tailor’s art. Somehow with Eggsy it’s even better, knowing he’s dressed like this in part because of Harry, still wearing the style Harry had chosen for him.

He adds, “Chester used to finish for the day at three. On the golf course by four.”

“Don’t fucking talk about him right now,” Eggsy says, half-moaning and half-laughing, and Harry stands to take his mouth again, sharing the sentiment absolutely. Eggsy seems to like that, goes pliant against Harry when he has to raise his face for kisses, fingers in Harry’s hair pulling him down. He’s rubbing himself against Harry’s hip, a slow rolling glide as if he thinks perhaps Harry hasn’t noticed, the cheeky wretch. Christ, the pleasures of youth; Harry is fully on board and delighted about proceedings but his prick is taking a bit of time to catch up, thickening slowly.

He pushes Eggsy back onto his chair and follows him down, shouldering between his thighs. Eggsy looks gratifyingly gobsmacked to have Harry on his knees, raising his hips obligingly for Harry to get his trousers undone and falling down his legs, his underwear pushed down to his thighs.

He presses his mouth to Eggsy’s upper thigh first, teasing, taking in the moment. Eggsy is creamy pale, here, and smooth over firm muscle, as vital and invitingly sensual as a Bernini marble. Tempting, a musky scent spiralling from his skin as Harry noses at him; delicious. Harry bites, very softly, and Eggsy gives a ragged gasp above him, a rising sound Harry could fancy is his own name. 

Eggsy’s hands slide into his hair, clumsy, his cock pushing flushed and leaking against Harry’s cheek. “Sorry,” Eggsy says. His thighs are quaking under Harry’s exploring fingers, in a way Harry associates with being almost unbearably turned on, and it’s wonderful, to have such an effect on such a beautiful creature. To think about having the opportunity to _learn_ this, to understand Eggsy in this fundamental endlessly fascinating way; Harry wouldn’t be a spy if he weren’t driven to know secrets.

Eggsy takes hold of his cock, the sight almost blurry Harry is up so close, and gives it a luxurious tug, a tiny grateful moan spilling out of him and down to Harry. Harry ducks his head into the movement, Eggsy’s knuckles glancing off his cheek like a caress, and sucks one of Eggsy’s balls into his mouth carefully, waiting for - yes, there, a groan, full-throated and heavy-chested and shocked. 

He licks a hard fast stripe up the underside of Eggsy’s cock, exulting in the way the groan turns into a high ecstatic whine. How long Harry’s been thinking about this, about Eggsy sweet and loose under his hands, about showing Eggsy what pleasure is, all that potential and determination, taking his _time_.

Eggsy is easy to enjoy, demonstrative and noisy. He must have had lovers - relationships - but having time and space, out of the cramped walls of his mother’s flat, the claustrophobia of his estate and the intertwined relationships there, perhaps that’s new. He touches Harry like it is new, like he’s afraid he might be in a dream. It’s a thrill Harry hasn’t had for - oh, years; he fucks for work and he picks up outside it, cool-eyed practiced handsome men who know the score, who stay in his life for a few months and fall out as easily as they arrived. 

There will no falling out from Eggsy, no letting Eggsy easy come easy go; he went to too much trouble to bring Eggsy in, Eggsy went to too much trouble to bring Harry home, and he’s not letting Eggsy slip through his fingers now.

Eggsy is shaking by the time Harry sucks his cock properly. 

Still, though, just the head, lavishing clever curling flickers of tongue around smooth suction, the way of it coming back as easily as any of Harry’s muscle memories and much more pleasantly. This is what makes Harry palm himself, rub and coax his cock to full hardness finally: the heat and richness and taste of Eggsy’s dick in his mouth, Eggsy’s hips lifting the tiniest bit to press himself deeper inside Harry’s mouth, so rhythmic and instinctive it’s as if he can’t help himself, and that’s what Harry wants, greedy for it, for Eggsy to lose himself, lose all this Kingsman stress and Arthur nonsense under Harry’s touch.

“Oh my - _fucking_ God, _Harry_ ,” Eggsy says, sounding rapt, and then, “Oh my _God_ ,” in despair, and Harry lifts his head, Eggsy’s cock falling from his lips with a lewd wet sound, and follows Eggsy’s gaze to the email that’s just popped up on his computer.

“What the fuck,” he says; it’s too amusing to be really offensive, especially with Eggsy’s red face, blushed hot with desire and mortification twined. “Am I boring you, dear?”

“No!” Eggsy says, scrambles down to his knees and yanks Harry close, kisses him too messy and appealing to be anything but sincere. “Sorry, fuck, I’m just - in the fucking office, and I get - _fuck_ , I’ve thought about this and all, I can’t believe I’m fucking this up.”

Harry holds him close, strokes his back with sweeping soft touches, learning the strong muscle of Eggsy’s back, his reassuring solidity. “You’re not,” he murmurs. “Come here.”

He kisses Eggsy, there on their knees in front of Eggsy’s antique desk chair, slowly, coaxing Eggsy’s attention back until Eggsy forgets to be embarrassed. He’s gratified and touched by the way Eggsy clutches at him as he rises, tries to follow his mouth. He crowds Eggsy back standing against the desk for more hungry kisses, frenzied now with Eggsy’s cock swaying wet and demanding against the hot swell of Harry’s prick in his trousers.

The computer makes a reproachful ping and Eggsy stiffens.

“Come on,” Harry says, taking Eggsy’s hand.

“I can’t wander round the halls like this,” Eggsy says, holding his trousers up and shuffling along. Then he gives up, drops them and his tight underwear to puddle on the floor and steps out of them and Harry draws near again, irresistibly fascinated by the glorious arch of Eggsy’s bare arse, running his hands over the soft roundness of his cheeks and pulling Eggsy in to ride for a few filthy excellent seconds against Harry’s thigh. He’s so fucking turned on he doesn’t even give a shit about the bespoke trousers on the floor, which he usually most certainly would.

“We’re not going far,” he says, undoing his own trousers with one-handed skill. He drops onto the comfortable sofa tucked in the corner of Eggsy’s office, pulls Eggsy down into his lap and slides a hand up his back and into his hair to bring their mouths back together. Eggsy throws himself into kissing like it’s the only thing he wants to do, a joyousness to it, like he thinks he’s getting away with something.

It’s catching. Harry loses himself in kissing again, Eggsy’s cock warm against his stomach and his own an eager ache, his whole body feeling alive and vital like the adrenaline of a successful mission. Like he’s doing something much more important than merely kissing a beautiful boy in a warm safe place; like nothing is more important than this.

Eggsy’s noises into Harry’s mouth take on an urgent tone and he finds himself murmuring back as he shifts them, lying down on on his back on the narrow plush sofa and bringing Eggsy on top of him. He’s slightly appalled at himself, sweet nothings at his age, but not enough not to do it, when he sees how it makes Eggsy look so pink and pleased.

“Just gonna do this?” Eggsy says hopefully, rutting against him, his weight heavy and welcome.

“I think we can do a bit better than that,” Harry says, “I wouldn’t want you to get distracted again, darling,” gets his hands on Eggsy’s hips. He encourages him to wriggle and turn over Harry, gets Eggsy shuffled back so Harry is encompassed by his scent and need and all that gorgeous pale skin he so admired earlier as he helps Eggsy catch his weight securely on his knees and brings Eggsy’s cock deliberately back to his mouth.

Eggsy’s moan is stopped up by Harry’s cock swallowed into his throat in turn. Harry’s quick learner, his lovely bloody show-off overachiever, and he shows Eggsy what he likes by example, lips and tongue and fingers playing a perfect dance on Eggsy’s cock.

Eggsy's hips start to move, gently but enthusiastically fucking himself into Harry's mouth, and Harry is aroused enough now to bear it, the pretty head of Eggsy's cock nudging into his throat. This time it will be undeniable, no getting dressed and suppressing a wince at the ache, Harry's voice will show off that he's been sucking cock, and it won't need much imagination to know whose. He pushes his own prick helplessly deeper into Eggsy's mouth at that thought, the soft wetness of it almost unbearably good. It’s too far out of Harry's control for him to process, the urgent way Eggsy is sinking his mouth on him, their connected bodies a sinuous rollercoaster.

He feels Eggsy crying out before he hears it, a split second before he tastes Eggsy's come, swallows it down and strokes Eggsy's tensing thighs, supports him gently where Eggsy would have collapsed down onto him. Eggsy is whimpering by the time Harry lets his cock slip out, oversensitive and fat and sticky; it fascinates Harry, the vulnerable sensation of Eggsy's prick softening in his mouth, the contrast between his urge to tenderness there and the raw hunger, the careless grasp towards pleasure of his cock still in Eggsy's slack mouth. 

He gropes down for Eggsy, pulls him off unceremoniously. Eggsy is all limbs and warm nuzzling nose and soft pink mouth as he cuddles back down on Harry right way up, twines their fingers around Harry's spit-slick cock. Eggsy kisses his own name out of Harry's mouth as they make him come, together, climax radiating and shimmering out from his balls. 

Harry's head aches as the orgasm dies away, like blood boiling in the scar at his temple. He touches it despite himself and then Eggsy is there, tentative, his tongue tracing the pale numb skin and then the warmth of his mouth in a soft kiss.

“You okay?” Eggsy says, drowsy, and Harry shifts them, presses Eggsy back into a cosy space between himself and the back of the sofa and puts his arms around him. 

“Fine,” Harry murmurs. Eggsy sighs against him, eyelashes flutter-tickles against Harry's skin, and he says, “Good. You are lovely, Eggsy.” Feels Eggsy's mouth, then, the corners upturning where he's smushed into Harry's side, easing down slowly. 

He's roused from a light doze by the intercom buzzing on the desk. Eggsy squirms, murmuring into Harry's throat, peevish at the interruption. “I'll get it,” Harry says softly. It's a struggle to pull himself away from Eggsy, from their safe sweet twine together; their mouths keep wanting to find one another, his hand wants to be on the smoothness of Eggsy's hand and cheek and chest.

Eventually he manages to drag himself back to the desk, answers the insistent buzz and says, “Yes?”

“Galahad,” Dan says. “Er – Arthur has a five thirty.”

He's tempted to tell Dan and Arthur's five thirty both they can fuck off, but when he looks over at Eggsy he's already putting himself to rights, pulling his trousers on and tucking his shirt in with a sinuous hip move that makes Harry briefly believe in God.

He says instead, “Yes, that's fine,” and cuts the connection.

“Sorry,” Eggsy says. “It's Emily, she's got all these proposals for making the estate self-sufficient for energy, and if I don't see her today – tomorrow's jammed and I promised Mum I'd go over for tea, I ain't seen Daisy in three weeks, I'm always getting over there after her bedtime -”

“It's all right,” Harry says. He crosses the office back to Eggsy, takes his tie out of his hands and loops it around Eggsy's neck, over the upturned collar. Eggsy stands still for him, docile, and Harry ties a neat knot, fixes the collar over it, puts his hands on Eggsy's shoulders and kisses his forehead when he sways uncertainly into Harry's chest. “Isn't Emily under Merlin? Surely he can handle it.”

“Yeah, she is, but she was telling me about this stuff in the canteen the other day, and it seems good,” Eggsy says wanly, muffled against Harry's shirt. He sighs and Harry wraps his arms around him properly as Eggsy relaxes, taking Eggsy's weight. “I don't think Chester paid any attention, you know? They wanna tell me what they're doing.”

“I see,” Harry murmurs. Eggsy lifts his face, gaze searching Harry’s and Harry cups his face and kisses him again, gently. 

“You can go home,” Eggsy says abruptly, when they’ve parted. “Sorry about -” he gestures vaguely at the estate around them. “I just wanted to know you was close, I suppose.”

“Thank you,” Harry says. His voice is as scratchy as he’d wanted. Eggsy looks mixed pride and awkwardness, at hearing it or at the words themselves, and Harry leans in for a last kiss, just a faint brush of mouths, concentrating on the plushness of Eggsy’s full lips against his.

Dan sees him out with the usual pleasantries, and Ian stands up at the door.

“I’ve been freed,” Harry says dryly. Ian glances at Dan, who confirms before welcoming Emily in from the hall, where she’s looking at Harry rather too knowingly, and closing the door. “You can go back to your usual duties, Ian. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Ian says cheerfully. “Nice to have an indoor job when it’s pissing down.”

“How are you finding him?” Harry says, nodding at the door. “The new Arthur.”

Ian brightens. “He’s good, yeah. Normal, isn’t he? Not like - sorry, not that you’re not normal, but Mr King, he never talked to us or let on or nothing. I’ve been telling my boss for ages I fancy doing something else. Not that there’s anything wrong with mowing the lawn. He asked me, Eggsy, now I’m going to start with the mechanics next month. Apprentice sort of thing. Proper trained up.”

“I’m sure you’ll be very good,” Harry says. “Thanks for taking me about.”

***

He doesn’t go home, in the end. Lamb chops are on the menu and he feels a need to stay close that he doesn’t care to examine too closely. He restricts himself to an austere two fingers of whiskey for a nightcap, finds a couple of sleeping pills left over from some incident or another, and goes to bed early. 

Breakfast is followed in by Giles. 

“Bit early, isn't it?” Harry says, pulling his dressing gown tighter around him in a meaningfully aggrieved way and finding an extra cup so Giles can have some tea. 

“Just got in from my mission, old chap, heard our esteemed leader had put you in bondage,” Giles says, taking a seat without being asked. “Are you going to eat that toast?”

“Have the toast,” Harry says irritably, squeezing a chunk of lemon over his smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. “I don't want to talk about it.”

He leaves the _with you_ loudly unspoken and Giles looks wounded. “I assumed you’d understand more than ever that we need to talk about it,” he says. “Who ever heard of grounding an agent? He's overstepped, Harry, you must see that. Are we to spend all our time checking in to see whether father is happy before we take any action? The whole thing will fall down.”

“I don't think it's going to become a general thing,” Harry says, thinking seriously about going straight back to bed and flinging the covers over his head. 

“He's overwhelmed,” Giles says quietly. “Overwhelmed and making bad decisions. He's dangerously close to losing the respect of the whole Table, and then where will we be? It'd be a kindness to him to take over, Harry. I'm not suggesting his head on a pike at the gate, for Christ’s sake. He’ll be an agent, in the field, like he should have been in the first place.”

“Hmm,” Harry says. He's overpeppered his eggs; his mouth is tingling. He steals half a round of toast back. 

“Daniel is keen,” Giles says softly, persuasively. “And Jonty. I've talked to them. They see he's not ready. If you'd help, Harry - they're prepared to follow you.”

“Are they,” Harry says. “Don’t let me keep you, Giles. I need to dress.”

***

Merlin offers to let him start the clearance tests again, but Harry chooses to spend a quiet day instead, wandering the grounds and then holing up in the library. Without thinking too much about it he messages Eggsy and asks to see him; the answer comes back very quickly, Eggsy's back-to-back busy today and then, Harry remembers, he's going to his mother’s. 

He's about to message back _perhaps after the weekend_ , although that seems a long time away, when another message pops up. Eggsy has to come back to the estate late tonight, and can join Harry in the evening? If Harry is planning to stay over. 

Harry wasn't planning to stay over. He messages back, _of course_. 

***

It is late when Eggsy arrives. Harry has granted himself access to the estate’s camera network, which is informative bordering on intrusive, and Eggsy traipses in well after ten, by car rather than the shuttle. Merlin had settled his mother in Surrey, neither too far from her friends in Walworth nor Eggsy’s new flat in Vauxhall, but it's a good distance from there to HQ. Arthur’s regular driver, Reg, is another one with nothing but good to say of the new incumbent. 

Eggsy pauses in the hall, at the foot of the stairs to the wing where all the agents have their suites. Then, with bowed head, he heads dutifully to his office. 

Harry goes to shower. He thinks too much of what he ought to do after, before he just goes ahead and does it. One foot up on the loo seat, stretching and lubing himself, about as unsexy as can be imagined, but he lets his thoughts drift and they drift to Eggsy. Not specifics; just the eager warmth and scent of him, the softness in his eyes when he looks at Harry, the inevitability of how Harry looks back. 

He puts on warm pajama bottoms and his glasses, carefully turned off so they're absolutely definitely neither transmitting nor liable to interrupt anything that might happen to happen, pours himself a drink and props up pillows to sit back against while he reads his book. Vanity, all is bloody vanity, but one uses the advantages one has in this world. 

The cautious knock on the outer door is very faint from here. Harry yells, “It’s open!” and a moment later he hears the keypad unlock for Eggsy's fingerprints. Another few moments - Eggsy working out where he is, presumably; Harry doesn't have any cameras to look at, now - and Eggsy appears in the doorway to the bedroom. 

Harry peers at him over his glasses, his book held loosely, the covers rumpled artfully over his lap, and the look on Eggsy’s face as he takes Harry in is worth all the fussing. He looks struck with lust, intensely, his gaze sketching across Harry's bare chest and up to his face and a beaming smile spreads so clearly Harry can track it, the curving lips, his eyes brightening and tiny lines touching the corners with pleasure. Such a simple thing, bringing joy to someone merely by existing, and yet Harry's never felt quite as sure as he is in this moment that he's mastered it. 

“Hello,” he says softly and stretches his hand out, inviting. Eggsy comes as if hypnotised, starts stripping off as he hurries close, and by the time he's flinging himself on the bed and climbing eagerly up to catch Harry's mouth with his, covers rucking up between them, he’s half-nude and Harry can slide his palms over Eggsy's bare warm skin, down the taut muscle of his magnificent back to grope at the lush curve of his arse, thrilling at how familiar it’s becoming, at how nicely his hands rest there. 

Between them they shove Eggsy's jeans down, baggy enough to fall over his hips without too much effort. Eggsy is bare there, underneath. “You tart,” Harry says, delighted, and he doesn't resist the immediate urge to reach for Eggsy's cock, already thick, play with him and watch him get fully hard, flatteringly quickly, in Harry’s hand. 

Eggsy groans and hides his face in Harry's throat. “Don't start,” he says. “I don't never have time to do a fucking wash, do I.”

“Oh, I wasn't complaining,” Harry says. He pushes Eggsy off him, gets the covers out from between them and his own pajama bottoms off at the same time, discards it all. The way Eggsy relaxes back and his eyes go dark and greedy is the most urgently important moment of Harry's life, more than saving the Prime Minister’s life on his very first mission, more than any of the others, and he leans over Eggsy to kiss him deep and slow, gives Eggsy his weight when Eggsy clings him down on top.

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” Eggsy says, between kisses, confessional.

Where does Harry have to go, if not Kingsman? But he knows what Eggsy means, he understands what Eggsy meant to say. “I’m where you put me,” he says instead. He moves down Eggsy’s body, licks at his nipples, twines their fingers and holds Eggsy’s hands down while he bites a briefly-pale line down the centre of Eggsy’s lovely abs, kisses absently at the cock lying hard and leaking on Eggsy’s stomach.

“Yeah,” Eggsy says, breathlessly, dreamily, the kind of state where anything at all could come out, but everything that does is only truth, and Harry revels in it; this simple, pure power, not because he’s the one with the gun or the strength, just because Eggsy _wants_ him so bloody badly, because the way their bodies fit together is so bloody extraordinary. “I thought about… fuck, Harry, yeah, just - that tickles, shit - yeah. Thought about tying you up to the bed or something, I dunno. Wanted you there when I needed you.”

“Did you, love?” Harry says. He nuzzles in at Eggsy’s hip, the only bit of Eggsy’s exquisitely-trained torso where there’s any softness, kisses him there and scrapes his teeth against the cut of his hipbone experimentally. Eggsy tastes a little salty, here, as if his sweat crystallises, and he squirms as Harry licks him. Eggsy grabs at him, tugs at his hair, and Harry slides up him to kiss again, swings his leg over Eggsy and sits astride him, Eggsy’s gaze hot on his face and Eggsy’s hands hot on his hips.

“Yeah, I - yeah, _fuck_ , Harry, _Harry_ , you’re already - fuck, you feel good, you already -”

“I didn’t want to wait,” Harry says, indistinctly, gliding his way slowly onto Eggsy’s cock, thigh muscles pleading. Eggsy feels big inside him, inescapable, much more so than the other night which has an unreal tinge to it when Harry thinks back. Tonight is technicolour-sharp reality, precious. Eggsy is watching him as he moves, awed and a little envious as if it isn’t his cock making Harry shudder with how fucking good it is, and Harry asks, “Did you want to do it?”

Eggsy’s hands are on Harry’s hips, helping him to find a rhythm, their rhythm, and then when Harry braces his own hands on Eggsy’s chest to take some of the strain off his legs, he slips one hand over Harry’s and clasps it there, holding Harry’s hand to his skin. It’s good, the touch, Harry instinctively wants that rather than his hands on the bed. He wants to be just here, leaning over Eggsy and making that quiet private space for them again, the sweat of his brow that falls rainbow-prismed through the air mingling with the sweat of Eggsy’s.

Eggsy says, “Yeah. Yeah, I wanted… I liked doing it. _Harry_ , you looked at me like it were new. Like you hadn’t done it for ages.” He cries out then, sharp, almost like pain, except Harry already knows what Eggsy sounds like in panic and in pain, and this isn’t that, just sheer desperation as Harry flexes his thighs and hangs over him, clenching and working his muscles around just the head of Eggsy’s cock before he sinks down again. Relief to his trembling legs: relief to his tight heavy balls; pleasure diffusing through his body, soft and gentle until Harry is aware he’s smiling, beaming, and Eggsy is looking back at him just the same way.

“Did you like that idea?” he says, not recognising his own voice, hazy and deep. “That it was new?”

Eggsy is red, down his throat and onto his chest, and Harry leans down and kisses the hollow of his throat, kisses the beginning out of Eggsy’s mouth of, “Liked the idea it was me. Just me, you liked me doing it. That, _Harry_ , fuck, your arse - that it was gonna be me and you. I didn’t ever think you’d even let me, you know -” Eggsy makes a lewd gesture and Harry captures his hand, brings it to his mouth and kisses his fingertips, licks his palm and guides Eggsy to close his hand tight round Harry's cock. 

“Really?” Harry says, working now, purpose in him, in his body without instruction or interference from his mind, like the easiest best greatest of his missions. He can feel Eggsy stiffening more inside him, his arse feeling meltingly stunningly sensitive, the soft smooth head of Eggsy’s cock and the thick heavy shaft and the firmness of his hips and thighs as Harry slams down hard, fucks what he needs out of Eggsy. “Whyever not?”

“Dunno now,” Eggsy says, almost insensible. Laughing, he’s so beautiful, Harry’s clever beautiful boy. “You look - like it's good.”

“It's good with you,” Harry says, truth driven out of him with Eggsy’s hips slamming his cock up and in and greedy. “This is good, Eggsy, you're good - _fuck_ yes, Eggsy, that's good, I want you to make me come -”

He clasps his hand round Eggsy’s on his cock, shows him how tight and how fast and how bloody good, _perfect_ , and he loses time as orgasm blows through him, loses vision, loses everything but Eggsy groaning under him, holding Harry hard enough to leave his mark tight on Harry’s hips as his own orgasm crashes through him.

***

Eggsy is quiet after. Harry settles the covers over them and gets Eggsy draped languidly over his chest, runs his hand up and down and around the slick muscles of Eggsy's back and enjoys the simple, sensual pleasure of touch. 

Eggsy stirs after a while and Harry makes a gently interested noise. 

“I know Giles come to see you, before,” Eggsy says and Harry opens his eyes and looks up into the dark.

“Oh?” he says. 

Eggsy makes a noise of small, stifled misery. “Harry. Do you think I don't fucking know? He wants me out, loads of them do. Give you Arthur instead.”

“Eggsy,” Harry says softly.

Eggsy says, “You should take it.”

“ _Eggsy_ ,” Harry says again. “No.”

“You should!” Eggsy says, his body taut and stiff against Harry’s but still tight against him, wanting the warm animal comfort of touch, and Harry rubs over his skin, soaking in Eggsy’s fear and pain as if he can take it from him, as knowing of Eggsy’s body now as his own. “Do you think I don't _know_ I ain't fucking good enough, Harry -”

Harry cradles him and kisses him, stopping the swell of distress. “Darling boy,” he says, low with passion and protectiveness, and Eggsy turns his face into Harry's neck, breathing hard. 

“Can I stay here tonight?” Eggsy whispers eventually. “I'm shattered.”

“Of course,” Harry murmurs, strokes his hair. Eggsy cuddles down onto him, curling small. “Stay here with me.”

***

“Am I early? I understood the meeting had been moved forward,” Giles says, pausing at the door. Only Harry is sitting at Table, Eggsy leaning next to him and rolling a pen between his knuckles, rapid and graceful.

“We wanted to have a little chat to you first,” Harry says. 

“I see,” Giles says. He walks in and sits down, assuming a stronger veneer of haughtiness with every step. “Together?”

The amount of insinuation he manages to load onto the one word is impressive. Eggsy bristles and Harry rests a hand on the small of his back, pointedly, and gives Giles a smile full of teeth. 

“I've asked Galahad to advise me,” Eggsy says; the slight sulkiness to it at least masks the rehearsed tone he'd had when they'd practiced with Merlin earlier. “He's going to jib off the fieldwork, for now. Help out in Arthur’s office instead, come along to Council next month, free me up to keep my hand in out there, that sort of thing.”

“I see,” Giles says again, more thoughtfully. His gaze lands on Harry. “Well, that seems like a helpful idea, Arthur. Is everyone getting a personal announcement?”

“No,” Harry says, calmly. “Arthur thinks it might be nice for you to go out to India and talk to the organisation there about how they’ll be voting at Council.”

“They’re very busy, aren’t they,” Giles says. His gaze meets Harry with perfect, reluctantly admiring understanding. “I understood they might not find their way clear to making it to the meeting, this time around.”

“We live in hope,” Eggsy says, sanguine. He sits down, at the head of the table, and shoots his cuffs, the picture of debonair assurance. “Don’t we, Harry? And in the meantime a nice jolly, bruv, don’t say we never do anything for you.”

“Quite,” Harry says. “The jet is ready now, actually, if you’d like to head off.”

“What if I’m not ready to head off?” Giles says quietly.

“I think you’ll find you are,” Harry says. He’s not smiling, now. Nor is Giles. Giles’ gaze flicks to the tray on the sideboard over Harry’s shoulder. Nothing that doesn’t lie around Kingsman quarters as a matter of course; a flask full of brandy, and a handgun.

“I’m sure it will all be highly successful,” Giles says, rising from the table.

“I expect so,” Harry says.

Eggsy says, “Good luck,” and something passes between him and Giles. Not liking, certainly not, but perhaps there’s respect, which is a start.

“Harry,” Eggsy says, when they’re alone.

Harry reaches for him under the table, rests a hand just above his knee reassuringly, feels Eggsy’s strength under his palm. “It’s all right,” he murmurs, and Eggsy covers his hand, twines their fingers under the Table and squeezes. He’s smiling again, just about, the soft smile that’s all Harry’s own.

“Let’s bring them in, shall we?” he says, and Eggsy says, “Let’s.”

 

END


End file.
